


Trust Enough

by geneticallydead



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Anal Sex, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Complete, Gay Bucky Barnes, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Modern!Bucky/Cap!Steve, Rimming, Sex Work Positive, Shrunkyclunks, Switching, Under-negotiated Kink, fake escort au, virgin!steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-12
Updated: 2016-05-12
Packaged: 2018-06-07 23:29:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6829822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geneticallydead/pseuds/geneticallydead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Saturday. Yeah, that’s good,” Steve says, and actually scuffs his shoe at the ground. Like a ridiculous shy superhero damsel. “Say eight? I live-“</p><p>“Yeah, big building with the A on it,” Bucky says, and can’t help a big stupid grin. Steve stares at him, looking a little dazed, and after their whole conversation it’s only now that Bucky’s brain catches up and realises Steve finds him quite attractive. So. Win for Bucky.</p><p>“Let me get your number,” Steve says finally, after they’ve stared stupidly at each other for about three hours, taking out his phone. </p><p>So they exchange numbers, and then Steve says he should go, and Bucky agrees, and they kind of stare at each other for a bit more, then Steve actually does go, but not before taking Bucky’s hand and squeezing it warmly in a way that makes Bucky want to shiver all over. Then Steve is gone, and Bucky is standing alone in the alley, grinning to himself.</p><p>Right up until the moment he remembers that Steve thinks Bucky is an escort he’s just hired.</p><p>Well fuck.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bucky is an asshole.

**Author's Note:**

> This has been the fake escort AU I have been working on FOREVER that is now apparently finished. Yay me! I will be posting the next two chapters tomorrow after some final editing because I cannot delay gratification.
> 
> I have tried my best to be sex worker positive in this fic, even if it's a fake sex worker AU, because I absolutely support sex workers. Please let me know if I've missed the mark at all.
> 
> Also I am on [tumblr](http://geneticallydead.tumblr.com/) \- come say hi!

It happens because Bucky is an asshole.

 

That’s an understatement. Bucky isn’t just an asshole, he’s a greedy, selfish person who sees something perfect and as-yet untainted by general assholery, and he goes and fucks it. Literally.

 

Seemed like a good idea at the time.

 

It goes like this: he is milling around Manhattan’s rich and famous at the Met while David talks to some diva in a sparkly gown, feeling distinctly like he’s playing fancy dress in his too-slick suit (tie loosened and top button undone because _Jesus_ ), when suddenly David is touching his arm to introduce somebody.

 

Captain America, it turns out.

 

“And this is Bucky Barnes, my dashing young companion for the evening,” David says extravagantly, because he is an old army buddy of Bucky’s dad, and _also_ an asshole. You wouldn’t know he was vet, because he is quite flamboyantly gay and Bucky is pretty sure that while Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell wasn’t a thing back then, there were rules about it.

 

“Steve Rogers,” Captain America says with a smile, and holds his hand out to shake. He is in actual dress uniform. Is he even in the army anymore?

 

“A pleasure,” Bucky says, just managing not to roll his eyes while he shakes hands. Cynicism is his only defence against the fact that Captain America is about twenty times hotter in person than he is on TV.

 

“Are you looking to buy?” David asks, waving a hand at the array of art on the walls. Bucky suspects that David put on the affect of the limp-wrist so often it became permanent one day, and he never recovered. “Bucky and I are both vets ourselves. You could say the army brought us _together._ ”

 

It’s not what he says so much as how he says it – like David is making a lewd innuendo out of an otherwise innocuous statement. Bucky gives a tight smile in response, deciding that David has just been upgraded from asshole to _complete tool_. He and Bucky’s dad used to do this shit – try and rib each other mercilessly in public with an unsuspecting audience – and somehow when Barnes Senior passed away, Bucky inherited David and his shit-eating grin.

 

“Oh. Oh how… nice?” Captain America says, going a little pink. “Not looking to buy. Just, um, escorting my friend. Pepper Potts? And supporting veterans of course. I think this is a wonderful exhibition.”

 

That’s what this is – a whole exhibit full of art produced by veterans, about veterans, et cetera. All the funds raised by sale of the art goes to rehabilitation programs, but David is really here because there are a subsection of the artists whose work focuses on LGBTQIA issues in the military. Having lobbied for and written extensively about equal rights in the defence forces for years, he’s a natural big-name invite.

 

Bucky only agreed to come for the free booze.

 

“Buck is an excellent _escort_ ,” David deadpans, and then gives Captain America a conspiratorial wink, making Captain America flush.

 

“Baby, the whole point of my services is supposed to be that nobody _knows_ I’m an escort,” Bucky says in a fake whisper, because _fucking hell._ He slips his hand down to cup David’s ass, knowing that having his best friend’s kid cop a feel is beyond comfort even for him. The asshole.

 

“Huh. Well. I think. Pepper? So. Nice to meet you,” Captain America says, spinning on his heel and disappearing into the crowd. David waits until he’s out of earshot before losing it, wheezing with laughter as Bucky removes his hand from his ass.

 

“Didyouseehisface?!” David gasps, clutching at his knee.

 

“Not nice. He is a beautiful, gullible American hero,” Bucky says. Looking across the crowd, he can just see that golden hair.

 

“Oh come on,” David says once he can stand upright, straightening his tie delicately and flicking a strand of silver hair off his face. David never seems to age, just head deeper into silver fox territory. “The guy got frozen in the 40s. How tolerant do you think his kind would’ve been of guys like me in the service?”

 

And that is how Bucky meets Captain America.

 

* * *

 

How he meets _Steve Rogers_ is the part where he’s really an asshole.

 

It’s getting late, and David is still networking, and Bucky kind of owes him forever on account of him saving his dad’s life before Bucky could be conceived, which David never lets him forget. So he’s outside, tie loosened further and another button undone, smoking a rare cigarette and staring up at the stars he can’t see in Manhattan. He’s mostly in the shadows, around the side of the building, and suddenly a fire door opens and Captain America steps into the alley.

 

Bucky mouths ‘ _fuck_ ’ silently and tries to step back further into the shadow of the building. His foot knocks an empty glass bottle, which goes skittering loudly across the pavement.

 

“Hello?” Captain America calls, stepping unerringly towards him. “Are you oka- oh. Hi.”

 

“Yes. Hi,” Bucky says, and starts reaching for his smokes until he realises he still has one in his hand.

 

“Sorry about earlier. Some things about this day and age still surprise me, I guess,” Captain America says.

 

“What part, Captain?” Bucky says sarcastically. “That I’m a gay man daring to be out in public, or that I make a living from it?”

 

Bucky genuinely does not mean to keep up the whole _I’m-a-gay-sex-worker_ shtick, but it comes out of his mouth anyway. And besides, some part of his brain that hasn’t had too much whisky and not enough food decides, nothing fucking wrong with sex workers, gay or not. They do a job, like any other.

 

“It’s Steve, please. I only wore the uniform because Pepper thought the publicity would- anyway. What surprised before me was the openness. I’m glad. It’s one of the parts of being in the future I like better,” Steve says, stepping deeper into Bucky’s shadows until his profile is limned only by the streetlight from the mouth of the alley. “Growing up… people couldn’t be different. It could get you thrown in jail or killed. I was small and scrawny, and looked different enough without admitting… well.”

 

_Ah_. Bucky feels exactly like the total asshole he is.

 

“I’m sorry. I served when Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was still in effect. Guess I’m sensitive,” Bucky says quietly. He tries for a minute to decide exactly how to tell Captain Handsome he is not, in actual fact, a sex worker – then decides he can’t without making Steve feel a bit humiliated. The man is so _earnest_.

 

“I’m sorry too,” Steve says, and then sticks out his hand. “Try again? I’m Steve Rogers.”

 

“Bucky Barnes,” Bucky says with a wry smile, and shakes. Steve’s hands are hot. All of him is gorgeous. Up close, and without David trying to rile him up, all Bucky can focus on is the fact that Steve Rogers is a ridiculously pretty man.

 

They’re still kind of holding hands.

 

“What if… what if I wanted to call you sometime?” Steve says quietly.

 

“Yes please,” Bucky says immediately, because his brain has turned off and taken all his game with it.

 

“Is that the best way to… book you?” Steve asks, sounding beautiful and awkward.

 

It takes Bucky a moment to process what Steve means, and when he does, it’s like he has a little angel on one shoulder and a little devil on the other, just like in the old cartoons, and both of them are chanting ‘ _fuck Steve Rogers._ ’

 

“Um,” Bucky says intelligently.

 

“I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have-“ Steve starts, withdrawing his hand, and Bucky _aches_ to have it back. He aches and he _wants_ and he’s a bit drunk but he’s never had much self-control to begin with.

 

“Next Saturday. Next Saturday night is good for me. I have time. We could- yes. I would like that very much,” he blurts all in a rush, making Steve smile, and ohhhhhhhh _his smile._

 

“Saturday. Yeah, that’s good,” Steve says, and _actually scuffs his shoe at the ground_. Like a ridiculous shy superhero damsel. “Say eight? I live-“

 

“Yeah, big building with the A on it,” Bucky says, and can’t help a big stupid grin. Steve stares at him, looking a little dazed, and after their whole conversation it’s only _now_ that Bucky’s brain catches up and realises Steve finds him quite attractive. So. Win for Bucky.

 

“Let me get your number,” Steve says finally, after they’ve stared stupidly at each other for about three hours, taking out his phone.

 

So they exchange numbers, and then Steve says he should go, and Bucky agrees, and they kind of stare at each other for a bit more, then Steve actually does go, but not before taking Bucky’s hand and squeezing it warmly in a way that makes Bucky want to shiver all over. Then Steve is gone, and Bucky is standing alone in the alley, grinning to himself.

 

Right up until the moment he remembers that Steve thinks Bucky is an escort he’s just hired.

 

Well fuck.

 

* * *

 

The following morning in the depths of his hangover and pity party, Bucky determines that when (if?) Steve texts to confirm the details, he’ll confess (with proper spelling and grammar for once) that he is not really an escort, just an asshole who would still like to get to know Steve. And Steve’s dick.

 

A few days go by, and Steve doesn’t text, and Bucky can’t decide if he’s devastated or relieved, until finally on the middle of the week his phone starts ringing. Actually ringing. The caller ID says ‘Steve fucking Rogers okay’ (because whisky?), and _of course_ he wouldn’t text. He was frozen sometime around the stone age, when people spoke to each other, instead of just writing abbreviated messages with smiley faces in a civilised manner.

 

“Hello?” Bucky answers. Having the phone against his face feels weird.

 

“Hi. It’s um, Steve Rogers?” Steve says, sounding a lot more nervous than he did a few days ago.

 

“Yeah. I was hoping to hear from you,” Bucky says, and knows he sounds so breathy that he could pass for a phone sex operator which – different kind of sex work, but still.

 

“I feel like… like I need to explain some things,” Steve says, and hurries on before Bucky can say anything. “I just. Everybody knows me. I mean, since New York but especially since DC. And first, before the war, I was small and sick all the time. And during I was always in the field and then – well, there was the ice. And I can’t seem to meet someone I would want to- oh god. Everybody knows me, Bucky, and I don’t want to end up a trophy.”

 

“Uh,” Buck says, and coughs just for time to think. “Okay. Take a deep breath or two, and let that be the buffer between your brain and your mouth. What are you trying to tell me here?”

 

There are a few moments of silent breathing on the line.

 

“I have never had sex with anyone, male or female,” Steve says in a small voice.

 

“Go on,” he manages to say in a mostly not-creepy voice.

 

“I just… I want some experience. I want to feel confident in what I’m doing if I do end up in a serious relationship, without it becoming some big thing. And I think if I just tried to get it out of the way with casual sex – well, I’d end up reading about it online two days later or something.”

 

I will never tell a soul, Bucky mentally promises him. Fake-escort’s honour (lewd finger salute optional).

 

“So booking me is a safe way to get some sexual experience without needing to worry about it showing up in the tabloids, or putting pressure on any future dating experiences you have?” Bucky says smoothly. All that time watching Oprah reruns once he got back stateside: paying off.

 

“Yeah,” Steve says, letting out a gusty sigh. “I feel like… I feel like you don’t care about the Captain America thing either, which helps.”

 

“Well I _might_ care, but your costume is dumb,” Bucky says, and smiles when it makes Steve laugh. “I’m not even joking. The helmet-deal? No. Get it together, Rogers.”

 

“Jerk,” Steve says, but with a melty warmth in his tone.

 

“Punk,” Bucky replies, because Steve Rogers, beautiful virginal national icon, is about as far away from punk as you can get.

 

“So Saturday at eight?” Steve says, and now the warmth in his voice has shifted to something low and intimate, making Bucky bite his lip for a moment before answering.

 

“Yeah. Yeah, eight. Big building with the A on top,” he says.

 

“Looking forward to it.”

 

After they hang up finally, Bucky leans forward so he can carefully bang his head against his desk.

 

Later in the week, Steve does text – to ask what Bucky rate per hour is, say for three hours? Bucky spends a long, long time dreamily imagining what filthy things he can do to Steve Rogers in three hours, before firmly stuffing down any pangs from his conscience and texting Steve a dollar amount (one he spends a bit of time Googling first).

 

Because Bucky? Bucky is an asshole.

 

* * *

 

The cash is in an envelope on the dresser in his bedroom, where he is about to- where they are going to-

 

Steve tries not to think about it.

 

If he thinks about it, he will get both painfully aroused and increasingly nauseous. He is paying for someone for sex. He is paying Bucky, who looks like he could model underwear on one of those billboards that still shocks Steve every time he sees them in Times Square.

 

Despite what most of the modern world might think, he’s not a prude. He just grew up in a different time, with profoundly different social mores. He was too busy being sick and just scraping by the edge of existence to be a rebel or an activist or hell, even a unionist. He just barely got by after his ma died, and even then the army and the serum probably saved him from certain death the following winter. He was worn down and worn thin by the time Erskine found him – nobody and nothing but himself in the world.

 

So men and women wearing very little clothing on billboards still shocks him, almost every time he sees them. Probably, he’s started to suspect, because he’s got no more than a passing familiarity with the real thing. Which is all about to change.

 

_Bucky_.

 

He wasn’t unaware of working girls back in the 30s and 40s – there were probably working boys too, he just didn’t recognise it – women doing their best to make money when there wasn’t any, to feed mouths and pay rent. He’d never been inside a brothel, but he’d known of some – maybe conditions had been better there than on the street, and the girls just did the work because the money was better than other jobs for women back then.

 

Bucky didn’t seem like he was hard up for money, but who knew? Steve wasn’t an idiot, and could click his way through blogs with the best of them. He’d found activist blogs for all sorts of things – sex workers, reproductive rights, stem cell research, civil rights – he wanted to know what people really thought of the world, so he read and read and read to remember that now that he was big, it was his responsibility to respect and raise up those that were small.

 

Tony would probably have an aneurysm if he knew that Steve had hired a sex worker, but he could believe and understand that it was a job, just like any other, and engaging one was simply sex positive as long as it was with his and Bucky’s consent.

 

Steve winds these thoughts around and around in his head to prevent himself from thinking about how Bucky has this _smile_ -

 

He paces.

 

“Captain Rogers. Mr Barnes is in the elevator,” Jarvis says calmly, and Steve jumps.

 

“Let him up, please,” he says, and after Jarvis acknowledges him, goes to stand in front of the elevator. And then paces.

 

When the elevator doors open with a chime, Bucky is there – wearing a thin black v-neck t-shirt over sinfully black jeans, his hair curling rakishly over his forehead, with tennis shoes he’s already toeing off in the entryway. He jerks a thumb at the elevator.

 

“Your elevator talks,” he says. “I’m scared to ask if it talks for everyone, or that’s just me.”

 

“That’s Jarvis. He’s the resident AI. And he’s everywhere, not just the elevator,” Steve says, coming forward with a smile. He doesn’t know what to do – shake hands? Cheek kiss?

 

“Meanwhile, Christ. You look amazing,” Bucky says, already moving on – just when Steve was about to start expounding on the topic of Jarvis for twenty minutes because he is so, _so_ nervous. Bucky looks him up and down. “I could honestly take a photo and jerk off to nothing else for the rest of my life.”

 

Steve doesn’t know what to say to that, because _what on earth_ do you say to that? So he looks down at his, yes, admittedly very tight white t-shirt and navy-wash jeans, and then back at Bucky. Who is watching his face now, probably the blush Steve can feel climbing his cheeks, and smiles.

 

“Hey,” Bucky says, and pads over in his bare feet, only about an inch shorter than Steve.

 

“Hey,” Steve says.

 

“You okay with this? Anything you’re not okay with, you just say,” Bucky says calmly, and it makes something that has been wound pretty tight in Steve’s chest loosen.

 

“Yeah, I’m… I’m really okay,” Steve says, and Bucky reaches up to touch one finger to his cheek, trailing it down Steve’s jaw.

 

“I’m really glad you called me, and I want to make you feel really fucking good.”

 

Steve feels his belly clench at the words, because Bucky is so beautiful, so confidently and calmly sexual in a way that Steve is not, and even if he’s being paid to be here, he sure as hell looks like he means what he says.

 

“Can I kiss you?” Steve whispers, and Bucky lights up with another one of those smiles that gives Steve vertigo and nods.

 

“Yes. So much yes. Let’s do that a lot.”

 

Bucky cups the back of his neck, drawing him down in one smooth motion so their lips can touch – only this, just this, and already Steve wants to start moaning and never stop – then Bucky licks at his lips until Steve opens them in an indrawn breath of surprise, and they’re really, properly kissing. Bucky kisses him like he’s putting all of himself into it, hot and wet and enough to make Steve shudder with reaction, winding his arms around Steve’s neck and pressing against him. Steve flails his hands for a minute, before letting them land on the fine cage of Bucky’s ribs, feeling the heat of his body through his thin shirt.

 

They draw back after what feels like a minor eternity of kissing, and Bucky’s mouth is swollen and red and slick, and he gives Steve a sultry smile. “So that’s amazing,” he says conversationally, and Steve can’t do anything but nod. He wonders if he’s even capable of hyperventilating, because it sure _feels_ like he might.

 

“I, um. Bedroom?” Steve says, because yes, bedroom now, he has waited long enough to experience what the rest of the world obsesses about, and he’s got a pin-up star rubbing circles with his thumbs on the skin behind his ears and his brain is about to short out.

 

“Okay. I just wanted to ask a few things? That okay?” Bucky says, stepping backwards, taking his wonderful hands away, and Steve gives a hasty nod because he would do almost anything to get back to the kissing and touching. “So when you say you’ve never had sex with anyone, do you mean you have sexual experience but it’s limited? Or…?”

 

Steve can feel the blood rushing to his face, because apparently Erskine’s serum couldn’t cure all his ails and he still goes pink with the slightest provocation. He clears his throat awkwardly. “I have… there’s been some kissing,” he says.

 

When he risks a look up, Bucky has the kind of neutral expression on his face that implies he’s trying very, very had not to show any reaction whatsoever. Steve doesn’t know what to think about that.

 

“What we did just now, that’s about all you’ve done with another person?” Bucky asks, his voice under very deliberate control. Steve nods. “But you’ve, ah, when you’re alone you’ve…?”

 

“Yes,” Steve says hastily. “I mean, it’s been a lack of opportunity, not a profound commitment to chastity or anything. So I’ve… yes. A lot. And I figured out pretty early on it was men _and_ women who interested me, but that wasn’t something you shouted from the rooftops in the 40s, and it wasn’t until lately when I’ve had access to the internet and there’s porn and a lot more information on how it actually _works_ that I realised I might lean more towards men, so all my fantasies since discovering that whole thing have mainly been about men- please stop me talking. _Please_.”

 

Bucky is grinning, but it isn’t mean-spirited at all, more like the laughter of someone who could also let his mouth get away from him, so Steve grins helplessly back at him. He cups the back of Steve’s neck again, which is rapidly becoming his favourite thing, and gives him a short, sharp kiss.

 

“C’mon. Show me the bedroom in this sky palace of yours then.”

 

Steve’s bedroom is bigger than a lot of the apartments he and his ma had shared when he was growing up, and the bed alone could have been made from about ten of the flophouse cots Steve had spent his nights on after she died. But it faces south, and its wall of windows catches a wash of sunlight most of the day through – Steve has a desk and deeply comfortable chair set up in here for drawing. Being dark now though, the lights of Manhattan make a stunning panorama. Steve left just the bedside lamp on for ambience. He’d also changed his mind about seven times before finally settling on leaving a discreet bottle of lubricant and several condoms on the bedside table.

 

“Holy shit. Your bed like three acres, or what?” Bucky says as Steve leads him in, and then casually strips off his black tee and tosses it on a chair, leaving Steve dry-mouthed.

 

“I’m kind of a big guy,” he says without thinking – Bucky is lean but well muscled, with the kind of lithe build of a swimmer or dancer. He’s gorgeous.

 

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Bucky says with a smirk, and comes to tug at the hem of Steve’s t-shirt. Okay. They’re going right to the stripping off, okay.

 

“Subtle,” Steve says dryly, but his head is wrapped up in his t-shirt at the time so it kind of loses the effect.

 

“That’s me. Subtle Bucky. My nickname growing up back in the neighbourhood, ask anyone,” Bucky says, helping him get the shirt untangled and off – and then shoves Steve in the chest, so – caught off-guard – Steve topples backward onto the bed. Which. He’s very glad no other Avengers were around to see. Doesn’t matter though, because once he’s laid out, Bucky clambers onto the bed after him and starts prowling over him like a cat. “What’s that saying? Bigger they are, harder they fall?”

 

“I am pretty hard right now, so sounds legitimate,” Steve says breathlessly, and Bucky laughs, and drapes himself over Steve’s chest to kiss him again.

 

It’s good, so very, very good – deep, wet kisses, with Bucky’s fingers carding through his hair and scratching at his scalp, with miles and miles of bare skin touching as they shift and slide against one another. Bucky bites at his bottom lip, then licks it better, and Steve does moan this time because this is better than anything he could have imagined (and he has spent a lot of time imagining, since meeting Bucky a week ago), and they’ve barely gotten started yet.

 

“You’re gorgeous,” Bucky murmurs against his mouth when they break for air, and then mouths at the line of Steve’s jaw for a moment before propping himself up a little to run one hand down his defined pecs and abs, an entranced look on his face. “Just utterly gorgeous, you know that?”

 

He tries not to, but Steve gets that cold, sick feeling that he always gets, whenever somebody talks about him being attractive. He knows how he looks, and he can’t spend two minutes online without being reminded that the world is a big fan of the strong body and jaw that the serum gave him. He just wishes it didn’t feel so much like it’s because being scrawny and sick was some kind of aberration that had been corrected. That he wasn’t worth a dime of love or affection until he was Captain America.

 

“Wasn’t always this way,” he says quietly, as Bucky rubs his nose into Steve’s throat. “You maybe wouldn’t have wanted to be here with the little guy from Brooklyn.”

 

His tone probably gives him away, because Bucky jerks his head up to search Steve’s face, a complicated series of emotions passing through his eyes that Steve can’t parse. Then he sits up entirely, swinging a leg over to straddle Steve’s hips.

 

“Okay, no. Let’s be clear here. Every kid in America has grown up seeing the before and after photos of your Captain America makeover, right? Because of that, nobody ever questions this story that sounds like a fairy tale – small sick kid from Brooklyn gets magic drug that turns him into beefcake superhero, thank you very much Uncle Sam. You know _why_ nobody ever questions it?” Bucky says.

 

Steve shakes his head, not following.

 

“Because the serum may have given you height and strength and, I don’t know, the ability to tell when it’s going to rain. But what makes you Steve Rogers didn’t change. If I do this,” - Bucky leans close and cups his hands around Steve’s face, so they obscure the enhanced line of his jaw. His eyes flicker over Steve’s features for a moment, lingering on his mouth, and then his mouth tips up in a lopsided smile - “ _There_ you are. The little guy from Brooklyn. You’ve been here all along. _Gorgeous_.”

 

Steve doesn’t know what to say. Bucky just keeps smiling that devastating smile, stroking his thumbs over Steve’s cheekbones, like he hasn’t just lanced an old, _old_ wound in Steve – he feels it hurt, but in the way that heals. He knows he’s making that face that Natasha calls his ‘kicked Labrador’ face, but he can’t stop.

 

“I want you so much,” he says huskily, and some part of his mind is shrieking warning signals at him, because right at this moment, he does _not_ mean sexually.

 

“I want you so much I may die,” Bucky says in a very serious tone, and leans down to kiss him again. Steve closes his eyes, and if he thinks only of the feel of their mouths together, the slide of their tongues, he can pretend he is Steve from Brooklyn, with the narrow face and pointed chin, who has met Bucky Barnes sometime before the war and the serum, and Bucky wants to kiss him anyway.

 

* * *

 

He’s knows what he said about Steve’s face did something to Steve, but Bucky isn’t entirely sure what. He’s not sure it’s his right to ask or know, either – just that for a moment there Steve kind of shut down on him, so Bucky tried to fix it, and then he thought he’d made it much, much worse – and instead Steve is kissing him in a way that is so profoundly emotional Bucky is starting to wonder if their lives _actually_ depend on it.

 

Not that he’s complaining – he’s straddling a gorgeous half-naked giant who seems hell-bent on licking his way into Bucky’s skull and is going in through the mouth, with big calloused hands sliding all over his back and sides and chest. Hell no, he is not complaining. Steve is even more beautiful and adorable and goddamned virginal than Bucky had been imagining since their call on Wednesday, and he is a very bad man because ‘virginal’ is totally doing it for him.

 

He has half-formed plans for blowing Steve’s mind, among other things, but if he only gets this one night where Steve thinks he’s a paid escort, then Bucky’s damn well going to make sure Steve gets what he’s paying for. Sexual experience. Fucking _amazing_ sexual experiences.

 

“Wait, wait,” Bucky gasps, pulling away from Steve’s perfect mouth, and propping himself up on his elbows. Steve looks frustrated, a little desperate, and it’s a _good_ look on him. “I need to know. What do you- what do you wanna do? How do you wanna do this?”

 

Steve’s face contorts awkwardly with embarrassment, and oh, the man has _ideas_ all right. Bucky grins, and shifts his hips so he can feel Steve’s cock through his jeans against his, can grind them together a little.

 

“Tell me what you like, baby, I want to take such good care of you,” Bucky whispers, and Steve’s face goes a little slack.

 

“I want. I want you to fuck me,” Steve says after a long silence, and it’s all Bucky can do not come in his pants right then.

 

“Oh god,” he says instead, but that just makes Steve look worried.

 

“Is that not- I mean we can-“

 

“No, that’s good. That’s perfect. I want to fuck you so bad Steve, I swear,” Bucky babbles, because he no longer has control of his mouth. “Jesus, I’m just- ignore me right now because I’m- fuck. You’re a virgin and for your first time you want me to fuck you and that’s _so hot_.”

 

“You like it. That I’m- that I’ve never…” Steve says slowly, like he’s slowly sounding out words that don’t make any sense.

 

“Yeah. Fuck. Is that weird?” Bucky says, slowly rocking his hips against Steve’s, generating some truly amazing friction that he can’t quite bring himself to stop even though it could bring everything to a sticky halt prematurely. “I just want to make it good for you. You’ve never done this before and I get to show you how fucking fantastic it can be and that really turns me on.”

 

Steve gives a shy smile, that turns into an open-mouthed gasp as Bucky tries circling his hips a certain way. “No. Not weird. S’good. So good. I was worried it’d- well. Worried it’d be a chore for you. I have no idea what I’m doing.”

 

“No. So much, no. Okay. We have decided that you are gorgeous and I am going to fuck you and hey, how fast do you recover after you come, super soldier and all? I need to know for science,” Bucky says. His brain is getting hazy and there are sparks shooting up his spine and he could come just like this and be happy. Steve laughs, thrusting up into him now.

 

“Fast. Pretty fast.”

 

“Okay. Good to know,” Bucky pants, and hauls himself bodily off Steve and the bed to stand waveringly upright, needing to breathe deep for a moment and think about baseball and his Nan’s wonky cross stitch and the piece of code he’s been wrestling with for three weeks.

 

On the bed, Steve pushes himself up onto his elbows, a carved golden god with hair sticking up all over the place. Bucky waits until his hands are a little less shaky, then undoes his jeans and wrestles himself out of them and his underwear all in one go, straightening back up once he’s shucked them off and gripping the base of his dick to try and make it _calm the fuck down_. Steve is staring at him with wide eyes.

 

“I was going to come in my pants just grinding like that and I still have so many plans for you,” he says simply in explanation, giving a one-shouldered shrug.

 

Steve doesn’t say anything, just starts yanking off his own jeans – Bucky is deeply interested to note he isn’t wearing underwear. When he’s naked, Steve pulls himself onto the bed completely; a couple of pillows shoved under his head and shoulders, and every line of his ridiculously beautiful naked body shows his uncertainty. He looks like he doesn’t know what to do with his hands, whether to grab his (long, thick, perfect) cock or cover himself up.

 

“I trust you. Your plans, I mean,” he says quietly, and doesn’t that land like a punch to the gut?

 

When he feels like he’s got himself under control again, Bucky climbs back on the bed, crawling over Steve to brush a slow kiss against his mouth. Then he starts working his way down – pressing wet, open-mouthed kisses to Steve’s clavicles and down the centre of his chest, swiping his tongue across corrugated abs, right down to the fine trail of hair that goes from his belly to his cock. He lifts his head for a moment to give Steve a coy look, then wraps one hand around the base of his cock, and sucks the head into his mouth.

 

“Fuck. Bucky, oh fuck-“ Steve starts chanting, and Bucky would grin if he wasn’t doing his best to slide his cock all the way to the back of his throat and down. Steve tastes good – salty and musky – and he hollows out his cheeks with suction as he starts pulling back off.

 

Bucky sucks him hard and fast like this, taking Steve as deep as he can, jacking the base of his cock with his hand, pulling back with hard suction, swirling his tongue over the head and then taking Steve back in again. Bucky has always liked sucking cock, but this is even better than he’s had before – Steve is gasping and cussing, arching his hips off the bed with jerky, aborted attempts to fuck into his mouth. Finally Steve shoves a hand into Bucky’s hair, clenches hard and gives some stuttering attempt at a warning, before shooting come over the back of Bucky’s tongue with a hoarse cry, and Bucky greedily swallows it all down.

 

Bucky’s jaw aches, and he probably likes the way Steve yanked his hair a little too much, but he pulls his mouth off completely with a slow, leisurely drag, licking at the head of Steve’s cock once he’s done. He feels sated and pleasured even though his dick is untouched, and a little amazed to realise Steve isn’t going soft _at all_ – he might be slightly less hard, but he’s not going down.

 

“Roll over, Stevie,” Bucky says, a little hoarse and not entirely sure where the nickname came from.

 

Steve, looking completely dazed, blinks at him for a minute, until Bucky taps his hips and he obediently rolls over. Bucky takes his time arranging him – stuffing a couple of pillows under his hips, spreading his thighs and pushing him up on his knees a little, until Steve’s infuriatingly muscular ass is in the air, spread lewdly. Steve has his face mashed into a pillow, completely relaxed, but he shivers when Bucky strokes his palms over the cheeks of his butt.

 

“…Huh?” Steve manages from the pillow.

 

“Just tell me if I do anything you don’t like, okay?” Bucky says, and Steve’s head does something that looks a bit like a nod.

 

“’kay.”

 

Bucky strokes both thumbs down the cleft of Steve’s ass, then uses them to spread him right open, leans forward and puts his mouth right on his tight hole with a lick. It’s like a bolt of electricity shoots through Steve, and suddenly his head is up and he’s craning around to look at Bucky with a truly hilarious look of wide-eyed surprise.

 

“I’m gonna get you wet for me,” Bucky says simply, voice low and hot. He ducks his head again, teasing Steve’s hole with his tongue, and then pushing against the tight muscle with the tip.

 

“Oh good god,” Steve says, and drops his face back into the pillow, pushing his hips back against Bucky’s mouth.

 

Bucky takes his times with this, none of the hard rush of getting Steve to come in his mouth from before – he fucks Steve’s ass with his tongue slowly, leisurely, sometimes stroking with the flat of his tongue or circling his hole with the tip, sometimes grabbing handfuls of his butt and shoving his tongue in as far as it will go. Steve starts moaning at some point and doesn’t stop, even scrabbling up onto his knees and rutting back into Bucky’s mouth.

 

When Steve is panting and swearing and gasping Bucky’s name, Bucky snags the lube from the bedside table and slicks up his fingers, and the transition is seamless – he draws his mouth away, and Steve rocks his hips to follow, and so one finger slides into his ass without any trouble. Steve makes a strangled noise, and starts fucking himself back on that too, a little more urgently, until Bucky adds a second finger and he has to spend a few minutes breathing through the sensation. Bucky waits him out.

 

“I want your cock in me,” Steve breathes into the silence after a moment, and Bucky has to close his eyes not to just shove his dick in Steve’s ass right now and fuck them both unconscious.

 

“You’ll get it baby, I promise,” he says, and slowly starts thrusting his fingers into Steve’s hole, feeling the muscles gradually stretch and loosen.

 

He gets up to three fingers, Steve making hoarse, urgent noises as he’s fucked with them, and then Bucky reaches around and starts stroking Steve’s painfully hard cock with one hand. He crooks his fingers, finding that sweet spot inside judging by Steve’s sudden yelp, and then nails it with every thrust of his fingers, until Steve shudders and groans and swears and comes on the pillow beneath his hips. Bucky milks his orgasm with the fingers in his ass and hand on his cock until Steve’s legs start to tremble, then he yanks the pillow out from under him, tossing it aside, and slowly withdraws his fingers so Steve can collapse slowly down onto the bed.

 

“Fuck,” Steve says after a minute, and rolls over onto his back with what looks like great effort. He grabs Bucky, pulling him gracelessly onto his chest. “Kiss me.”

 

“You remember where I just had my mouth, right?” Bucky asks, raising an eyebrow, but Steve just gives a sloppy shrug.

 

“Don’t care,” he says, so Bucky kisses him – long and slow and deep. When they finally part, breathing hard, Steve’s eyes are heavy-lidded. He looks dreamy and pleased and fuck-drunk. He grins. “You’re amazing.”

 

Bucky cups his face with his hands, so he can only see Steve’s features and the point of his chin, just like earlier. “You are gorgeous.”

 

Steve’s eyes go soft then, with some unspoken emotion, so Bucky kisses him again and then sits up – he has no intention of letting Steve recover, or get his breath back – he wants to keep him so muddled with pleasure for so long that he’ll never fuck again without remembering that Bucky was his first. Which is a small and terrible thing to think, but Bucky can be small and terrible like that.

 

He grabs a condom from the bedside table, and is about to rip it open with his teeth, when Steve makes a small noise – not exactly a protest, but more like he has something to say. Bucky looks at him expectantly, condom foil dangling from his teeth.

 

“So, this might be completely inappropriate but, um. It’s been categorically proven by actual scientists that I’m immune to viruses – can’t even carry them,” Steve says. It takes Bucky a moment to process that, and what its relevance could be. Immune to viruses?

 

Bucky takes the condom from his mouth and looks down at it in his hand. He looks back at Steve. “So… you can’t catch anything. And if you can’t catch anything, you can’t transmit anything.” Steve nods. Bucky looks back at the condom. This may be _the best day of his life_ , all things considered. “I’ve never actually had sex without a condom.”

 

“I’m sorry, we don’t have to-” Steve starts, but Bucky tosses the condom over his shoulder.

 

“I get to fuck you bare? I get to fuck you _bare_ ,” he says, a little too intensely, but Steve just laughs, even as Bucky shoves his thighs apart and wedges himself between them.

 

He’s always been conscientious about sex, mostly because he grew up with David telling him about all the funerals he went to in the 80s during the height of the AIDS epidemic. And if this were anyone else, he wouldn’t give a fuck what they said about being immune to viruses, Captain America or no. But this is Steve, and Bucky already knows he’s honest. He also knows that Steve hasn’t been near anyone else sexually in his life, and that his own fairly recent STD check came back negative. And if Steve says he can’t catch a virus, then Bucky feels like he probably watched lab experiments on his own blood being exposed to deadly illnesses just to be sure.

 

So Bucky can fuck him without a condom. Jesus Christ – no barrier between them, just the two of them, hot and slick and close and intimate. He has to rein himself in for a moment, because watching Steve come twice in the last hour has left Bucky on a fine edge of arousal that’s bordering into mania.

 

Meanwhile Steve still hasn’t lost his erection – Bucky can feel it trapped between them, pushing into his belly – but he ignores it for now, instead taking the time to lick and bite at Steve’s nipples, at the obscene swell of his pectoral muscles, listening to the little breathy sighs Steve makes in response, like he’s still all blissed out from coming so recently, but starting to come around.

 

“You have the most amazing tits,” he says, just to hear Steve’s surprised laughter. He shoves at Bucky, trying to get his face away from his chest, but doesn’t put any strength behind it.

 

“They’re not- it’s _muscle_ ,” Steve says, and makes a strangled noise when Buck scrapes his teeth over the hard slope of one.

 

“Nah. Look at these curves. They’re tits. Gorgeous tits,” Bucky says, trying to shove them together to create cleavage, while Steve laughs and half-heartedly tries to slap his hands away.

 

“You’re the worst. The actual worst.”

 

“I kind of wanna push them together and fuck them with my cock. Then come all over your pretty tits,” Bucky goes on, because apparently he can’t stop himself ever. A moment of dead silence, in which Steve’s hands go still over his own, and it takes Bucky a moment to dare a look up.

 

Steve’s eyes are wide and mouth parted, but it’s a look of profound desire. Jesus. That does it for him? Because Bucky would fuck the hell out of his tits to keep that look on his face forever and ever. He’d fuck a _lamp_ if it meant Steve looked at him like that.

 

“Why do I find that so- that’s not even something I’ve ever-” Steve tries, and then seems to give up, closing his mouth with a snap.

 

“Welcome to sex – where you can’t choose what makes you hot and your brain has weird opinions about it,” Bucky says dryly, and dips his head to bite at Steve’s nipple for just a moment. “For the record, I would push your tits together and fuck them so that the head of my cock pushed into your waiting and open mouth with every thrust. That’s how I’d do it.”

 

He’s rewarded for the comment by Steve making a strangled, choking sound and jerking his hips up to grind against Bucky. “Not fair,” he pants, and Bucky gives him a wicked smile.

 

“Baby,” he says, pushing himself up on his hands and looming over Steve, “I’m just helping you with your sexual experiences, remember? How helpful would I be if I didn’t expose some filthy future fantasy material?”

 

“Such a jerk,” Steve says, rolling his eyes – then gets an unholy gleam in them, even as he starts blushing. “Speaking of. Isn’t it long past time for you to relieve me of my virginity? Fuck my tight, virgin ass?”

 

“Uh,” Bucky says, all blood leaving his brain, heading south at high speed. He’s pretty sure it’s against the law for Captain America to talk dirty to him.

 

“I need you to teach me how to take your cock, Buck,” Steve whispers, warm splayed hands sliding up and down his chest. Bucky feels like he can’t breathe – Steve is saying those _things,_ and the best part is they’re going to come _true_.

 

“I think you’ve been watching some porn and I am very, very impressed with your impersonation of a twink porn star,” Bucky whispers back, sitting up long enough to slather his cock with lube, tugging down on his balls a bit for good measure. “For your reward, I’m going to absolutely teach you to take my cock in your tight, virgin ass. If you’re lucky, I may last beyond the point of getting halfway inside you.”

 

Steve is laughing, which is good because it means he’s relaxed as Bucky leans over him, shoving Steve’s legs wide apart and finding a pillow to shove under his hips. Steve goes quiet then, until Bucky circles his hole with one finger and he starts making throaty sounds of pleasure that are too hot for words. Bucky hooks one arm under his knee, spreading Steve out before him like a pornographic gay buffet.

 

“Still okay, baby?” Bucky asks a little tightly, because god, it’s going to happen, it’s really going to happen.

 

“Yeah. I want you Buck,” Steve says.

 

And who is he to deny the man? Bucky lines up his cock and then pushes in, nice and slow, and Jesus, Steve’s face – mouth opening in an ‘O’ of surprise, no pain there as Bucky slides on home, and Steve tips his head back, eyes closing as he gives a long, hoarse moan of pleasure. He’s slick and hot and tight, and Bucky has to stop and just breathe for a moment – Christ, there’s no condom, nothing between them, nothing to blunt the feel of Steve’s body taking him in, squeezing and twitching around his cock.

 

Bucky hitches his leg higher, adjusting the angle, and a shudder ripples all through Steve’s body, so Bucky can feel it too, and then Steve is looking up at him with wide blue eyes, mouth wet and red, and he rolls his hips.

 

“Fuck! Fuck, don’t, I’ll come,” Bucky says through gritted teeth, and Steve laughs, which – _not helping_.

 

“You feel amazing, Buck,” he says breathlessly, and starts trying to shift and grind his hips again for friction, laughing when Bucky swats at his belly and hips to try and make him stop.

 

“Baseball stats. Cross stitch,” Bucky mutters to himself, trying to pin Steve down with his free hand and run through the most boring shit he can think of in his head. “You are such a _little shit_ Steven, give me a minute here.”

 

Steve laughs again, breathless and beautiful, but goes still, just watching Bucky. Who is trying to get control of himself and not shoot his load into Steve’s stunning body and collapse, boneless, into a coma. He is gonna make this good for Steve even if it kills him, because the last thing a sexual novice needs is some jackass coming three seconds into the penetrative part of the evening and passing out from sheer bliss.

 

Gingerly he loops his arm out from under Steve’s knee – who immediately winds both legs around him in a somewhat terrifyingly powerful grip – and lowers himself so he’s braced on his forearms either side of Steve, their chests brushing, face-to-face.

 

“Hi,” Steve whispers, hands roaming up and down Bucky’s back and kneading every bit in a way that feels so, so good.

 

“Hi,” Bucky replies, and kisses him. It’s like a moment out of time – deep and slow, like they have nothing else in the world to think about, not even the fact that Bucky is buried balls-deep in Steve’s ass. It’s perfect. Bucky wants everything to be perfect. When he breaks the kiss to lift his head, Steve gives him a glazed, fuck-happy smile, which makes Bucky smile back. “Ready?”

 

“Was ready before, but you were having a moment with baseball.”

 

“Punk,” Bucky says, and then kisses Steve and starts to move.

 

He goes slow, at first – a gentle rocking of his hips that has Steve making pleased noises into his mouth – building into a slow roll, pulling out an inch or two before sliding back in. The noises he’s making say Steve’s enjoying it all, but Bucky keeps shifting his hips, changing the angle, until suddenly he hits a spot that makes Steve arch up with a strangled cry, fingers digging into his back.

 

“What… that’s- prostate?” Steve gasps, and Bucky gives him a Cheshire cat grin in answer. Then he starts nailing that one spot with short, shallow thrusts.

 

Steve twists under him, making steady sounds of frustrated pleasure, and they’re not even kissing any more, just letting their mouths graze with moist gasps between them. Bucky knows he won’t last long, but figures he won’t need to the way Steve is fucking _falling apart_ beneath him. His thrusts get deeper, harder, and he’s trying very hard not to think about how warm and tight Steve is, how it feels like he’s fucking into the best thing to ever happen to him, and how goddamn _hot_ Steve is when he’s losing his mind to pleasure.

 

“Please, please Bucky fuck I need- I need-” Steve starts babbling, then reaches between them and grabs his own cock, jacking himself hard.

 

“That’s it baby, come for me, I wanna see your come all over yourself while I fuck you so good,” Bucky pants, not entirely sure what’s coming out of his mouth, but then Steve arches hard off the bed, back bowing up into Bucky, white ropes of come striping his belly and chest.

 

Bucky can feel it, the hard squeeze and ripple of Steve’s orgasm through his body, tight on his cock, and he can’t hold off any longer, pumping hard into Steve’s ass a few more times before coming with a strangled groan, feeling it crackle down his spine like a lightning strike.

 

It takes a moment to come back to himself, and when he does he’s slumped over Steve, face in his neck, whose come is now smeared into both their bellies, and Steve is still shuddering and shivering with the aftermath. Buck kisses his neck, content just stay in the moment; him and Steve, post-coital bliss, et cetera et al.

 

“Thank you,” Steve says after a while, voice soft and a little stunned. Bucky raises his head, and Steve looks… he looks vulnerable in a way even confessing his virginity hadn’t made him look.

 

“For what?” Bucky asks, frowning.

 

“Making this so… I don’t know. For giving me a connection, not just sex,” he says, and gives a little shrug.

 

“That’s what it should be,” Bucky says simply, and then smirks. “Speaking of connections-” he rolls his hips, where he’s still inside Steve, whose breath hitches.

 

He pulls away slowly, his softening cock slipping easily from Steve’s body, then scouts the room until he spots what looks like a bathroom door. His body creaks as he climbs off the bed – god, he needs to go to the gym more often – and makes it to the bathroom a lot more gingerly than he would like. He cleans up, then runs the water hot to soak a washcloth, which he takes with a glass of water back out to Steve. Steve gulps down the water in about three seconds, and then blushes pink as Bucky cleans him up with the cloth. He’s gone fidgety and shy, and Bucky isn’t sure why until he casts a look at the clock on the bedside table and speaks.

 

“There’s an envelope. On the dresser. I mean- it’s almost eleven.”

 

Ah jeez.

 

“Steve, we just-” Bucky cuts himself off, breathing sharply through his nose, and tosses the washcloth onto the bedside table. “You think I’m gonna leave you alone after that? Fuck no. Get under the covers, I’m staying.”

 

“You don’t have to, that’s not- I mean, I don’t want you to do anything out of obligation,” Steve says, looking up at him from under those sinful dark lashes. He is so pretty and Bucky just _can’t brain_ when he looks at him.

 

Bucky just shoves at his legs, dragging the covers out from underneath him. “We just fucked, and it was amazing, and your first time, and there ain’t no obligation here, pal. I’m staying because I want to hold you.”

 

He climbs into the bed, pulling the covers over both of them, and Steve turns on his side to smile bashfully at him, and Bucky’s heart stutters in his chest. He’s in trouble. He’s in so much trouble. He let his dick lead him into this, and now his brain has finally caught up a whole week later and alarm bells are sounding. Because Steve is trying to _pay_ him and Bucky just wants to curl up around him and keep him safe forever.

 

“Okay,” Steve says simply, and kisses him, the kind of kiss that makes Bucky feel like he’s drowning but air is overrated anyway.

 

They do curl up together, Bucky lying half on top of Steve, using one of those impossibly sculpted shoulders for a mildly uncomfortable pillow, their legs tangled together and arms wrapped around each other. Steve turns off the lamp, gives a happy sigh and falls asleep almost immediately.

 

Bucky lies awake in the dark, trying to figure his way out of this. Trying to figure a way where he can tell Steve the truth, and Steve doesn’t hate him, and Bucky can say he’s kind of falling for him and by the way he’s actually a data security developer, not a sex worker.

 

And he lied to get into Steve’s pants because he’s a fucking asshole.


	2. Bucky is still an asshole.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When the doors open into Steve’s seemingly empty apartment, Bucky stops in the entryway to drop his satchel and yank off his boots – the lights are on, but no sign of Steve. He wanders into the dining room that adjoins the open-plan kitchen and overlooks the sunken living room, and his eyes catch on a lone bottle sitting on the dining room table. It’s a bottle of lube.
> 
> “Steve? You here?” Bucky calls, and turns in time to see Steve walking around the corner of the wall that borders the hall the bedrooms are off.
> 
> Completely naked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some notes at the end for very mild under-negotiated kink. Nothing bad happens, just notes so you can decide if that might not be for you.

Steve wakes slowly, aware but drifting for a long time before he opens his eyes. He’d been dreaming he was back on the Front, about to go on some stupidly dangerous mission, but Bucky was beside him. A rifle in his arms and an easy grin on his lips. Except Bucky had never been in that war – hadn’t even been born until probably forty years later, while Steve was in the ice.

 

Bucky.

 

Steve can feel the warmth of naked skin against his own, shifting now – his back is to Steve’s chest, they’re spooned up together, and Steve’s dick is starting to take notice, pressed up against Bucky’s ass. Steve keeps his eyes closed a little longer, tightening his arm around Bucky’s waist, just enjoying the feel of having another person so close. Even if he’s being paid.

 

Although.

 

Bucky had insisted on staying the night, despite their agreement for three hours. He’s pretty sure Bucky hadn’t been faking his enjoyment the night before, and he’d made it so easy and sensual and fun. Steve had expected something maybe exciting, and hopefully pleasurable, because it was damn obvious they were attracted to each other and Bucky was smooth in a way Steve could never be.

 

He hadn’t expected to laugh during sex, that they would tease each other and kiss so long and deeply. He hadn’t expected that having Bucky kiss him while being inside him would feel so profoundly intimate and humbling. Maybe Bucky is like this with all his clients, maybe that’s why he likes his job. But it had felt special, to Steve. Which is terrifying.

 

Steve doesn’t want to like Bucky so much, because he can’t have any kind of relationship with him other than one that involves money. Even if Bucky liked him too, and stayed the night because he felt their connection was raw and intimate and worth pursuing, Steve still wants monogamy. It would be the height of hypocrisy for him to hire a sex worker, and then ask him to _stop working_. Steve has enough money to last several lifetimes, but isn’t that just another way to pay Bucky? Ask him to stop the work that gives him his independent income, then replace it with his own funds, making Bucky dependant on him?

 

And ohhhh, why is he thinking vague, inappropriate thoughts of moving Bucky into the tower with him after _one night_?

 

“Okay,” Bucky says in a raspy, sleep-warm voice all of a sudden. “If we both declare a moratorium on morning breath, it won’t exist and I can kiss you, right?”

 

“You’re so lucky I decided to forego the double garlic pizza last night,” Steve says, and can’t help but smile as Bucky rolls to face him.

 

Steve’s bedroom is washed with bright morning sunlight, and it makes Bucky’s eyes glow in a way that leaves him entirely unsteady. He’s looking calmly at Steve, his mouth curled in a little smile that reminds him of exactly what they got up to the night before. He’s perfect and Steve feels like he can’t breathe, an echo of the asthma he left behind so long ago.

 

“Hey,” Steve says.

 

“Hey,” Bucky says, and cups his face to draw him into a kiss. It’s sweet but sensual too – Bucky nibbling at his lips, then stroking his tongue across the same path. Steve leans in to pull him close and suck at his tongue, feeling Bucky’s miles of bare skin against his own. So perfect. Bucky crowds in closer, so their hardening cocks are pressed together, and Steve gives a little huff of pleasure.

 

“Hey baby,” Bucky says, and Steve’s belly gives that little ridiculous twist it does every time he calls him that. “How do you feel about fucking me this time?”

 

Steve pulls away, unable to speak for a moment, because- wow, the pictures that puts in his mind, Bucky naked and above him in the sunlight, or splayed underneath him, arching up wantonly. His fingers itch for pencils, and he knows he’ll be drawing pornographic images of Bucky for the rest of his life probably.

 

“Yes please,” he says finally, hating the way he sounds like he just walked out of Sunday school, but politeness has always been what he reverts to when he’s way, _way_ out of his depth.

 

“So polite,” Bucky says with a dirty grin, pressing Steve onto his back and sitting up to straddle him, and he is so incredibly beautiful in the sunlight, Steve was right. “I like it when you ask nice, baby.”

 

He’s going to die. He’s going to die with Bucky naked on top of him and he’s pretty fine with that.

 

“Please Bucky, I want to fuck you so bad,” Steve says in his neediest, breathiest voice, and Bucky goes very still, eyes dark. Steve laughs. “Welcome to sex - where you can’t choose what makes you hot and your brain has weird opinions about it.”

 

“I regret teaching you anything,” Bucky mutters, but his lip is curled in a half-smile. He reaches to the bedside table, grabbing the lube, and tossing it onto Steve’s chest. “Now fucking finger me open for your cock.”

 

It goes like that – Bucky instructing Steve on how to circle his hole with his slicked up fingers, pressing and probing, telling him how good it feels as Steve slowly pushes one finger inside, then two. Steve wants to commit it all to memory and hoard it away for later – how Bucky moans and rocks back on his fingers, fucking down onto them, hair falling into his eyes and long lashes fanning down as his eyes close in pleasure, the way he swipes his tongue out so his mouth is shined and then bites down on his lip. His hard cock pressing against Steve’s own as he braces himself with one hand on Steve’s chest.

 

When Steve has three fingers thrusting slowly inside him, Bucky sits up a little and gives a helpless cry of pleasure, telling Steve _there, right there_ , his hand raking down Steve’s abs. When Bucky pushes his hand away, breathing hard, Steve is almost disappointed – he could watch this all day, watch Bucky fuck himself on Steve’s hand until he came all over both of them. But Bucky has other plans in mind – he wraps one hand around Steve’s cock, lifts up with more elegance than seems possible, and slowly guides Steve’s cock back to his slicked hole.

 

“God,” Steve chokes out as Bucky starts sinking down on him, watching with wide eyes as his cock disappears into Bucky – hotter and tighter than he’d imagined, he can _feel_ Bucky’s body rhythmically squeezing around him.

 

“Fuck, Steve, you’re perfect – you feel perfect,” Bucky mutters, throwing his head back as he sinks all the way down, hilting Steve inside him.

 

They stay very still for a moment, and then Steve curls his body up, wrapping one arm around Bucky to support him, and rolls them both so he is on top, braced above Bucky on his elbows, still buried deep in his ass. They kiss, messy and wet and hot, and Steve gives in to instinct and starts rocking back and forth, sliding a few inches out before surging back in. Bucky curls his legs around Steve’s waist, hands threading into his hair and it’s so, _so_ good.

 

“Fuck me, baby. Fuck me properly – fuck me hard,” Bucky gasps against his mouth and – jeez, Steve’s only ever fucked his hand before but still somehow knows what to do.

 

He starts pumping in to Bucky, a steady pace but with power behind every thrust, until Bucky starts scrabbling his fingers at Steve’s neck and shoulders, giving a loud moan with every shove of his hips, trying to arch even further up into Steve, who bites and kisses at his neck and chest, leaving sucking marks behind that will bruise and he just thinks, _good. Mine._

 

They’re slicked with sweat, Steve’s whole focus is narrowed down to the tight, slick heat he’s fucking into and the solid feel of Bucky’s cock squeezed between their bellies with every thrust, but he can tell Bucky needs something more. So stops – Bucky giving a near-growl of frustration – and shoves his hands under Bucky’s hips to hold them together while he gets his knees under himself, and kind of drags them both up so he is kneeling and Bucky is straddling his lap, both upright. With his strength it’s easy to cup Bucky’s butt with both hands, lift him up and then _slam_ him back down on his cock.

 

“Oh fuck, _oh fuck right there do that again!_ ” Bucky yells, so Steve does.

 

Again and again, breathing hard, kissing Bucky with no finesse when his mouth is near enough, who has his arms wrapped around his shoulders for balance. Steve can hear an ongoing, strangled moaning sound he’s pretty sure is coming from his own mouth because, _god_ , this is possibly the best thing he’s ever felt in his life, and he shoves his hips up to meet every thrust, feeling his balls tighten up, but grits his teeth and focuses on hitting that same spot every time – the spot that makes Bucky’s eyes just about roll back in his head. Until suddenly Bucky goes tense and taunt like a livewire, legs clamping hard around Steve’s hips, grinding himself down hard on Steve’s cock, his cock jetting come across Steve’s chest and belly. Steve moans – he can _feel_ Bucky clenching down on his cock – and gives a few jerky thrusts into that squeezing tight warmth before coming too, feeling like every thought he’s ever had is shooting out of his body through his cock.

 

They slump back to the bed in a sticky heap, kind of rolling to the side so Steve is still inside him but not crushing Bucky, who shoves his face under Steve’s chin, into the damp skin of his neck, and gives a long groan of satisfaction.

 

“Can’t believe you made me come without even touching my dick on your first time out,” Bucky says after a while. Steve says nothing, but Bucky snorts. “I can feel you smirking, you know.”

 

Steve, who is definitely smirking, puts on his most innocent tone. “I’m just sure happy I could do the job, Mr Barnes. It’s real swell.”

 

“That 1940s shtick might work with the masses, but you still have your dick inside me,” Bucky snipes. “Try again.”

 

“It’s a pleasure to be of service,” Steve says in his Captain America voice, the one he uses when some news crew catches him right after he’s beat the tar out of some villain and he’s too tired to do anything but revert to Good Superhero PR Strategies, as Pepper calls it.

 

“You being of service? Pretty sure I’m supposed to be servicing you,” Bucky says wryly, and that’s when Steve remembers.

 

This isn’t some guy he met and maybe courted and fell into bed with; this is someone he’s _hired_.

 

There’s a long, awkward silence, during which Steve finally loses his erection, and slowly pulls away to slip his cock out of Bucky – who gives a sigh and sits up.

 

“I don’t want to take any money for last night. This morning. Whatever – I don’t want your money,” Bucky says, still gleaming with sweat and come, but with a mulish set to his mouth.

 

Steve just blinks at him for a minute, trying to deal with the rush of thoughts at this – that Bucky _wants_ to be here, no money – but that this means it’s more than just a session he’s booked with a sex worker. It means there’s a connection between them, but then, Bucky _remains_ a sex worker, and as much as Steve wants to throw himself at Bucky headlong he _can’t_ be the boyfriend on the other side of that life. He wants monogamy or commitment or a whole host of other things that probably don’t tie well with what Bucky does for a job. It would kill him, Steve knows. It would kill him to cross that line and probably wind up feeling something for Bucky (more than he already feels, anyway), and be unable to ask him to stop his work because that would just be so patently _unfair_.

 

“Hey. You don’t gotta frown about it like that,” Bucky says with a smile when Steve is silent for too long. “It’s simple, okay? I wanted to be here – I stayed because I wanted to. I’m not going to take your money for wanting to be here with you.”

 

“This is your job,” Steve says quietly while sitting up, and Bucky’s face twists up in a complicated way.

 

“Steve, I’m not really-”

 

“I want to pay you because I _want_ that boundary,” Steve says in a rush, and it’s remarkable how shuttered and emotionless Bucky’s face goes in an instant. “It’s better this way. I don’t want to blur the lines of what we’re doing here. I’m glad you’re here with me, and you’ve made this so good for me, but I _need_ you to just stick to how it is. That I booked you and then I pay you. So… so I want to book you again, because you’re amazing, Bucky. But I need this to be…”

 

“A transaction?” Bucky says flatly, and Steve nods in relief.

 

“Yeah. Something good. But also with a clear outline, you know?”

 

“Yeah. I get it,” Bucky says after a while, and clambers off the bed. “Mind if I shower?”

 

He doesn’t wait for a response, simply climbs naked and unselfconscious from the bed, disappearing into the bathroom and closing the door behind him with a deliberate click. Steve debates following him in – trying to explain himself further, perhaps, or just to apologise for being such a jerk about it all – but instead gathers up some clean clothes and goes to shower in one of the other bathrooms in the apartment. Never mind that he still can’t get over living in a place with _multiple_ bathrooms.

 

When he emerges into the open plan living space, dressed in jeans and a tee but still barefoot, intent on making reconciliatory coffee, he finds that Natasha is already in his kitchen, cup of coffee in hand. He freezes, and she quirks an eyebrow at him. He can feel himself slowly flushing red, and all he can think of is the decadently gorgeous _sex worker_ he’s presumably still got in his apartment somewhere.

 

“Good morning Steve,” Natasha says steadily, and casts a pointed glance at Bucky’s shoes, discarded in the recessed alcove by the elevator. Still here, then.

 

“Uh,” Steve says. Stupidly, the thing his brain is fixating on is that Jarvis shouldn’t have allowed her in – Steve has his access protocols set for permission granted by his voiceprint only.

 

Of course, the awkward silence between Steve and Natasha is then broken by Bucky, rounding the dividing wall that separates the living space from the bedrooms. He has his jeans on but his t-shirt is still in one hand, while the other towels his hair dry.

 

“Listen Stevie, I wanted to tell you – I mean, I should have told you earlier but-” Bucky says, and cuts himself off abruptly when he spots Natasha, lowering the towel. “Hey?”

 

“Well hey,” Nat says, giving him a long, appreciative once over.

 

Steve wants to die. He wants the tower floor to give way beneath him so he can plummet 80-something stories with a building of rubble following him down, because god. He dares to hire a sex worker to relieve him of his virginity discreetly and promptly gets busted for it. And while he’s not ashamed of his reasons for hiring Bucky, Natasha would probably be very kind and understanding about it all, and that would be _the worst_. He just wanted one thing, one thing that was his and his alone, and can’t even manage that.

 

“Wow, awkward,” Bucky says, and Steve makes eyes at him that he hopes conveys his feelings of _could you fucking not_. Bucky just grins at him, crosses easily to his side, and takes his hand, tangling their fingers together intimately and bumping their shoulders together. “We’re still pretty new for the ‘meeting each other’s friends’ stage, but here we are, I guess. I’m Bucky Barnes.”

 

Steve takes a moment to process, and then he could all but die of relief. Bucky is playing the boyfriend. Bucky is pretending they didn’t have some kind of weird, volatile not-fight just a few moments ago. Bucky is _coming to the rescue_.

 

“Natasha Romanov,” Natasha says, smirking so hard while looking back and forth between them her face will probably stick that way.

 

“Yeah, I recognised you from the…” Bucky waves the hand with the t-shirt vaguely. “Capitol Hill. Taking down half of DC. You know. Memorable.”

 

“And how did you meet our _Stevie_?” she asks, saccharine.

 

“That thing at the Met that Pepper took me to last week,” Steve says, glad he can answer this one. It’s true, so won’t trigger Natasha’s alarmingly accurate bullshit meter.

 

“I’m a vet, so,” Bucky says, and shrugs, like that’s all the explanation needed of why he was there. But also true, Steve realises – Bucky isn’t actually lying, he’s just acting on natural assumptions.

 

“Damn, Steve. You should have told me you were into guys too,” Natasha says, easily dispelling all of Steve’s 1940s-era tension about the situation with a wry smile, “I could have been trying to set you up with fifty per cent _more_ of the population this whole time.”

 

“Seems he does just fine by himself when he sets his mind to it,” Bucky says slyly, and cocks his hip out subtly, which makes Natasha smile. Wolfishly.

 

“Need something, Nat?” Steve asks in exasperation. He’d fold his arms over his chest, but it’s a little too Captain America when he’s got Bucky standing half-naked next to him.

 

“I came to strongarm you into a date with Lucy. You know, Pepper’s assistant? But it seems I’ve missed the boat on that one. Unless…?”

 

“I will physically fight Lucy on this, don’t think otherwise,” Bucky deadpans, and that actually makes Nat chuckle in a way that is almost real.

 

Steve has this feeling like he’s watching two stray cats circle one another warily, and he’s the scrap of meat they’re both feeling territorial over.

 

“Babe, sorry, I gotta run,” Bucky says then, pulling away to yank his t-shirt over his head. “Nice to meet you, Natasha.”

 

“I’m sure we’ll see you again,” she says evenly, and at a moment when most people would look discreetly away – Steve and Bucky turning to one another to say goodbye – instead watches with interest.

 

“I’ll call you,” Steve says meaningfully, and Bucky gives him a half-smile that makes him want to immediately fall back into bed.

 

“You better,” he says, and then cups Steve’s jaw with both palms, so suddenly he’s the little guy from Brooklyn once more. Bucky lays a mind-bending kiss on him – sensual for all that it’s relatively chaste – rubbing their lips together as if in reminder that they kissed so long the night before their mouths had gone numb.

 

Then he’s gone, picking up his shoes, carrying them into the elevator and giving Steve a final wave and a wink as the doors close. Steve stares after him, thinking how Bucky had come in just twelve hours before when Steve was almost out of his mind with nerves. He feels changed, and it’s not the sex that changed him. He lets out a wistful sigh. Big trouble. He is in _such_ big trouble.

 

“Oh boy, you got it bad,” Nat says, and Steve starts. He’d actually forgotten she was still there.

 

“How do you keep getting into my apartment?” he asks with a frown, going to the coffee machine to finally get a cup.

 

“Jarvis has a crush,” she says blithely. Knowing Nat, she could have _actually_ charmed an AI into giving her free rein of the building, so he’s not ruling it out. She comes to lean against the counter beside him, holding out her own cup for a refill. “So Bucky. He’s gorgeous. And you’re completely smitten. Want me to do a background check?”

 

“No! God no, that’s- why would I do that?” Steve asks. First he’s just horrified at the lack of trust that would show. Then he’s _doubly_ horrified when he remembers what a background check could actually unearth about Bucky.

 

“Because the world isn’t as nice as you wish it were,” Nat says quietly, and gives him a long, steady look – the kind that reminds him of all they’ve been through together. Of how the good thing both of them believed in turned out to be a shell for Hydra.

 

Steve looks away after a moment, frowning into his coffee cup. “Maybe I just want to take this one good thing at face value,” he says. Bucky may not be the boyfriend material he’s letting Natasha believe he is, but Bucky is still inherently _good_. He showed up to Steve’s nerves and inexperience and made everything easy. Made Steve feel like he wasn’t being prepped to be a novelty trophy on a shelf – closeted queer superhero that Bucky deflowered.

 

“Okay,” Nat says in a neutral tone, watching him closely.

 

“Why’d you really come by?” Steve asks, and she shrugs.

 

“Briefing in an hour. Your phone is off. Seemed weird.”

 

Steve remembers turning it off the night before with some trepidation – normally he always leaves it on, but he’d figured Jarvis could always reach him in an emergency. He hadn’t wanted interruptions – he’s half amazed that no other Avengers showed up before Nat. They’re collectively the nosiest group of people he’s ever met.

 

“I wanted some privacy,” he says to Nat, raising his eyebrows at her.

 

“Bet you did,” she smirks, and goes to the sink to rinse out her coffee cup. “One hour, Rogers.”

 

“Give me a hint,” he says resignedly. In the months since the fall of Shield, they’ve been routing out old and newly reformed Hydra nests all over the globe. It makes him sad to see the extent that Hydra has spread across nations – the more they find, the more meaningless his death in the ice seems to be.

 

“Dracula,” Nat says simply, and heads for the elevator. Romania, then.

 

“I’ll bring garlic!” Steve calls after her, and she sends him a smile over her shoulder.

 

Once she’s gone, Steve takes the time to drink his coffee and eat a slice or eight of toast. He’ll put on his uniform in a moment, gear up for the briefing knowing that it could mean leaving as soon as it’s finished. Chasing down these Hydra cells has often meant being gone from New York for a week or two at a time – the leads are thin and can take some finessing.

 

It may mean missing next week with Bucky, he thinks, staring down at the crumbs he’s made, eating over the sink. He knows he’s putting himself at risk here – that small, vulnerable part of him that wants to believe in happy endings – but can’t fathom not seeing Bucky again. He is too gorgeous, too lovely and perfect not to see again – Steve has laughed more in the last twelve hours than he has in the last two years since he woke up from the ice combined.

 

When Steve goes into his bedroom to change, he finds the envelope of money on the dresser is gone.

 

*

 

Bucky goes back to his little apartment in Brooklyn, a converted warehouse loft that has towering ceilings and walls of original-glass windows that let the light in, and tries to be normal. Which is fucking impossible, because all he can think about is Steve and the thick envelope of cash – taken in a fit of pique – now shoved in the back of his desk drawer. Jesus. He _actually took the money_ , that’s what a lowlife he is. He’s not exactly short on cash.

 

He tries to work, tries to focus on the lines of code in front of him, but by Monday afternoon has given up and hits the gossip blogs. There are reams of tabloid news sites and blogs devoted to the Avengers alone – posting blurry amateur cell phone pictures of Tony Stark in a restaurant with Pepper Potts, or sightings of Clint Barton walking his dog. Bucky trawls through months worth of Steve-sightings: Steve at charity events, Steve shaking hands with the President, Steve getting coffee. There are even the rare pictures of the Avengers on missions – Iron Man in the skies above Singapore, or the Hulk levelling some ISIS base in Syria.

 

It was easy to forget that Steve was Captain America when he was naked and laughing.

 

Wednesday, Bucky is staring hard at a newly posted picture – taken from a great distance – of Steve speaking with someone who must be Thor, going by the red cape, outside of a ubiquitous building on a narrow, cobbled street. His helmet is off, but he’s wearing his red, white and blues, shield gripped loosely at his side, blond hair shining in the sunlight. It’s obvious they don’t know they’re being photographed, and Bucky thinks Steve might be laughing. The caption says the picture was taken in Stuttgart a few hours ago.

 

When his phone rings, Bucky jumps – nobody calls, who _calls_? Caller ID says unknown number. He swipes to answer and lifts it to his face tentatively, having a good idea who it might be and feeling suddenly guilty that he’s staring at photos of him on the internet like some loser stalker.

 

“Hello?”

 

“Bucky?” Steve says, his voice low and the line crackling. There’s the quiet hum of conversation in the background.

 

“Hey. Hey, Steve. I was just thinking about you,” Bucky says, hastily closing his browser. “Where are you?”

 

“Safe house. Berlin.”

 

“That’s fucking classified, Rogers!” someone yells in the background.

 

“Clint, you literally just tweeted about it,” Steve calls back dryly. “Hold on Bucky, let me go somewhere quieter.”

 

“Who is Bucky? Do I know Bucky, Cap? You finally get a boyfriend? Is he a hundred years old too?” someone else calls, but getting quieter as Steve presumably moves away. Sounds like Stark.

 

Last time Bucky heard Tony Stark’s voice, it was through the Iron Man suit.

 

“Sorry,” Steve says after a moment, and the echo is a dead giveaway that he’s gone into a bathroom.

 

“You’re on a mission?” Bucky asks innocently, like he hasn’t been tracking Steve’s every move via the wonder of privacy-invading technology.

 

“Yeah. Hydra,” Steve says simply. He doesn’t have to say anymore – after DC, the whole world knows that Hydra didn’t die in Word War II.

 

“Can you bring me back one of those t-shirts that says ‘Captain America went to Europe to hunt a Nazi splinter cell and all I got was this lousy t-shirt?’”

 

“Done,” says Steve, laughing. “Maybe a commemorative plate if you’re lucky.”

 

There’s silence on the line after the laughter fades away, and Bucky listens to the sound of Steve breathing, feeling guilty and happy and desperate, all at once. He wants to tell Steve the truth. But Steve has made it pretty clear he only wants Bucky as an escort. And Bucky just _wants_ him so much; he’ll take anything he can get.

 

“You gonna be back by Saturday?” Bucky asks finally, embarrassed by how husky his voice is.

 

“I think so, yeah. I think we’ll wrap this up tomorrow, so I’ll be back in time to… I’ll be back. And I’d really like to see you. Same um, same fee okay?”

 

Bucky swallows down his nausea. “Yeah. But listen. I’m staying the night again. I want to stay with you. Part of the deal, okay?”

 

“Okay,” Steve says quietly. There’s another long silence, and finally he clears his throat. “I have to go. We’re about to suit up. But I’ll see you Saturday. Eight o’clock. Don’t be late.”

 

“Yes sir,” Bucky says with a huff of amusement, and Steve ends the call.

 

But whatever the Avengers are doing, it doesn’t wrap up in a day or two. There’s nothing on the web for a while, then suddenly they’re all over the news on Friday night – tearing apart some Hydra cell that’s been disguised as a children’s welfare group in Romania. Bucky sits on his couch, glued to the television with the sound turned off, watching Steve carry a couple of toddlers out of a scorched and crumbling building with a flat, empty look on his face. He’s got soot on his cheek, his helmet is gone and there are tears in his suit, but what Bucky can’t stop staring at is those kids. They’re only two or three years old, but they limply let Steve carry them with glassy eyes, not even holding on to him. They look drugged or, _worse_ , so deeply traumatised they no longer notice what’s happening around them.

 

Bucky goes to bed feeling deeply, deeply disturbed. In the morning, he stares at his phone for a long time, before texting ‘ _you okay?’_ to Steve.

 

_Yeah. Home tonight. 8pm._

 

Bucky goes to Stark tower that night not quite sure what to expect. He’s wearing jeans and a thin tee, the same uniform he all but lives in, just a nicer version. Elevator-voice greets him as ‘Sergeant Barnes’ this time, which is downright disturbing, as Bucky sure as hell didn’t volunteer his rank last time, but doesn’t ask for his thumbprint again. He’s whisked straight up to Steve’s floor without pause, as though the elevator-voice didn’t have to check with Steve this time for permission. Interesting.

 

When the doors open into Steve’s seemingly empty apartment, Bucky stops in the entryway to drop his satchel and yank off his boots – the lights are on, but no sign of Steve. He wanders into the dining room that adjoins the open-plan kitchen and overlooks the sunken living room, and his eyes catch on a lone bottle sitting on the dining room table. It’s a bottle of lube.

 

“Steve? You here?” Bucky calls, and turns in time to see Steve walking around the corner of the wall that borders the hall the bedrooms are off.

 

Completely naked.

 

“Fuck,” Bucky says with deep conviction, and can’t stop staring – Steve is naked and golden, with one hand wrapped around a _truly_ glorious erection.

 

He gives his cock a slow, meaningful stroke as Bucky watches, and when he finally drags his eyes up Steve’s carved-marble body, his eyes are dark and intense with the kind of need and desperate emotion that Bucky knows very well. Has seen it on other vets, has seen it in the mirror when he got back from Afghanistan. Steve has no doubt just seen some fucked up shit in the last few days, and very much just wants to _forget_.

 

Bucky can do that – he can totally do that. He can give Steve anything he needs because right now whatever Steve needs is what Bucky needs too. He’d probably throw himself off cliffs if Steve asked him to find out what flying felt like.

 

“Baby,” Bucky says finally, and Steve comes forward slowly, bare feet silent on the polished floorboards, swiping his thumb over the head of his dick. Bucky licks his lips. “Baby, tell me what you need.”

 

“I need…” Steve says, and pauses for a controlled breath. “I need you to take over for a bit.”

 

Bucky knows what that means too. The desire to not be in control for once, because you’re in careful control all the time and it’s _exhausting_ , so you just want to hand it all over to someone you trust. Someone who will take care of you, and won’t make you regret letting everything go – someone who will _help_ you let go.

 

“I am gonna take such good care of you,” Bucky breathes, and wraps a palm around the back of Steve’s neck to haul him in for a kiss.

 

It’s almost savage, the desperation with which Steve kisses him – none of the slow, deep strokes of tongue from the week before. This is more like kissing a particularly aggressive and aroused tiger – all teeth and tongue, with nips at his lips. Steve pretty much wraps himself around Bucky, one hand shoving under his tee to scrape down his back, the other making good headway into just shoving his jeans off his hips with the button still done up. Bucky threads his fingers into Steve’s hair, tugging gently until he gets the hint and breaks the kiss. Just barely. Their lips are still kind of touching.

 

“I do anything you don’t like or is too uncomfortable, you tell me to stop or slow down or give you a minute. _Anything_. No gritting your teeth and bearing it, understand?” he says firmly, and Steve gives a slow nod, eyes dark with desire.

 

“I’ve thought about this all week,” he says huskily. “Being here with you. Just having – this.”

 

Bucky interprets that to mean, _this, instead of the really awful shit I’ve had to deal with_. He glances back at the lube on the dining table; realises that a couple of chairs must be missing, leaving space in front of it, and when he looks back Steve is giving an adorably bashful smile. _Busted_.

 

“You want me to bend you over this table and fuck you, Stevie?” he asks, and he’s regretting wearing such tight jeans because his dick is uncomfortably hard right now. “Hard or slow?”

 

“Hard,” Steve says with a telling shiver.

 

“You even prepped yourself, didn’t you,” Bucky says, and it’s not even a question. “How’d it feel, stretching yourself on your own fingers, knowing you were making way for my dick?”

 

Steve’s mouth has fallen open a little, all shiny and red, and he’s stroking his big hand up and down his gorgeous cock, eyes dark with lust. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you. About how it felt when you… when you fucked me,” he says, and then gives that little smile again. “I almost came just from that.”

 

Bucky has to get this show under control or he’s just going to start rutting up against Steve’s leg while they’re both standing. And god, that sounds pretty good, but fucking him until he can’t remember his own name sounds even better.

 

“Bend over the table and spread yourself open for me baby,” Bucky says, voice surprisingly even, and Steve flushes but doesn’t say anything. He just goes to the edge of the table, where the bottle of lube waits invitingly, and leans down over the table. He braces with his hands first, then seems to realise he won’t be able to do as he’s been asked with his hands flat on the polished tabletop.

 

“Oh fuck,” Steve whispers, hesitating. He shoots a sideways glance at Bucky, who just raises an eyebrow. Steve huffs a sigh, then takes his hands off the table and puts them down near his hips, lowering his upper body down to rest on the table, head turned to one side. Slowly he shuffles his feet apart, and then reaches back to gently spread his ass cheeks apart.

 

He looks fucking stunning, and Bucky takes a moment to wonder how the hell he got to this place in his life, and how he can make it so he never has to leave. Steve is tall; bending over the table this way has his head a little lower than his hips. His back is arched, all those fine muscles rippling with every shift and twitch of nervousness and lust, and his ass turned up for inspection, cheeks spread apart by those lovely, long-fingered hands. Bucky can see the pink furl of his ass, glistening with slick, already looking a little swollen and loose. The heavy, furred weight of his balls are drawn up tight below that, and Bucky kind of wants to spend his night burying his face in Steve’s ass and making him come so many times he can’t think any more, with just his tongue and fingers. But slicking himself up like that – Steve wants something else. Maybe _needs_ it; needs to be taken out of his own thoughts and consumed with something else entirely.

 

“I’m not even gonna take my clothes off,” Bucky says conversationally. “Just get my cock out and fuck you. Christ baby, you’ve done so good, getting ready for me like this. Making it so easy, so I can just walk in and take you.”

 

Steve moans and his hips twitch with the praise, and Bucky thumbs the button of his jeans open and lowers his zip a little to relieve the pressure on his dick. Then he can’t resist stroking his hands down the perfectly displayed muscles of Steve’s back, right down to the pert spread of his butt – squeezing his cheeks. Like a peach. A round, firm peach. He dips his thumb into the cleft at the top and strokes down, so his fingers trail across Steve’s, who gives a desperate huff of air at the contact.

 

“Bucky,” he says imploringly, and if that ain’t the sweetest thing Bucky’s ever heard.

 

“Okay Stevie. Back up a little and brace your hands on the edge of the table,” he says roughly, taking a step back himself and shoving his jeans down his hips a few inches. When he draws his cock out of his underwear he’s already painfully hard and leaking at the tip.

 

Steve is hasty, getting himself braced in position, legs still spread, but at least he won’t bang his cock on the table’s edge every time Bucky fucks into him now – and just the thought of that makes a hard curl of desire yank at Bucky somewhere in the guts. Steve cranes his head around to watch as Bucky takes up the bottle of lube, generously coating his cock with one hand.

 

“I am gonna take such good care of you Stevie, but you gotta do one thing for me now,” Bucky says, voice almost hoarse with lust. “ _Don’t come_. No matter how good it feels and how much you wanna, don’t come until I say.”

 

Steve goes wide-eyed at that, a little more desperate, like just telling him not to come has made the need for it that much more persistent. Buck grins, probably a bit maniacally, and shoves his jeans and underwear down a little further so at least they won’t scrape against his balls for this. He takes his cock in one hand and steadies and spreads one of Steve’s butt cheeks with the other, and slowly, slowly rubs the head of his cock over Steve’s hole.

 

“Oh fuck, please,” Steve groans, dropping his head down to thunk on the table, and Bucky slowly pushes in.

 

It’s hot and slick and tight, and he feels Steve squeezing around him and the reverberation of his long, desperate moan running all the way through his body. Bucky struggles not to just shove all the way in; stunned by the gorgeous sight of his cock easing into Steve’s ass, his hole spreading obscenely to take him. Bucky isn’t much longer than average, nothing to boast about, but his cock his nicely thick and veined, and seeing Steve’s tight pink hole stretch to take him is _beautiful_.

 

“Baby, fuck – you look so good right now, you’re doing so good,” he babbles, and Steve keeps giving that hoarse, pleasured moan as Bucky sinks in all the way until he bottoms out, his balls resting against Steve’s.

 

He takes a minute to savour the stillness, the feeling of sweat beading between his shoulder blades and the weird realisation that he’s balls-deep in a national icon, _Jesus_. Then he slowly draws his hips back, pulling out so only the head of his dick is still inside Steve’s clenching hole, grips Steve’s hips tight and _snaps_ back in.

 

“Oh _fuck yes_ ,” Steve pants, and Bucky takes that as pretty enthusiastic consent so does it again, and again – hammering his cock home while Steve pants and writhes beneath him.

 

He looks amazing too – pale golden skin starting to sheen with sweat, trying to brace himself on the table but arch his back and roll his ass back into every thrust. Bucky can’t think, can barely breathe, but manages to lean forward over Steve’s body to grip his shoulder, bowing his body further underneath him, and threads the fingers of his other hand into Steve’s hair, gripping tightly. He uses the leverage of his hand on Steve’s shoulder to yank him back to meet every thrust, and pulls enough on Steve’s hair to make it feel like Bucky must be pulling Steve back onto his cock with it.

 

“Okay, baby?” he gasps, half curled over Steve now, close enough to lick the sweat on his spine – so he does.

 

“Yes Buck, yes, oh my _god-_ ”

 

“Don’t come, don’t come baby remember I told you don’t come yet just-” he pants out, and grits his teeth because fuck, he isn’t going to last like this, hips slamming into Steve’s, dick pumping into his ass, so _tight_ and _wet_ -

 

Bucky comes, a feeling like lightning starting in the soles of his feet and shooting up through his spine and brain stem – grinding against Steve, feeling like his cock pulsing come into Steve’s body is almost painful, the hot _squeeze_ of Steve all around him…

 

It takes him a minute to get his brain back online and realise he’s slumped over Steve’s back, while Steve all but vibrates with frustrated desire beneath him. Bucky peels his face from the sweaty skin beneath him, and slowly pulls his softening dick out of Steve, who moans mournfully as he does.

 

“Buck,” he says softly, sounding needy and frantic, and Bucky strokes the slick planes of his back, coaxing him upright. When Steve turns around his cock his painfully hard and dark red, the head positively wet with pre-come.

 

“You did so good baby, you didn’t come, just like I asked,” Bucky croons soothingly.

 

Steve looks like he’s on another planet – eyes glassy and pupils blown, his lower lip so swollen he must have been biting the hell out of it, and a pretty flush running from his cheeks all the way down to his dick. _Gorgeous_. Bucky reels him in and Steve just about lunges to meet his kiss, more teeth and tongue than skill, and now Steve is handsy like he’s never been before – stripped of inhibition and trying to wrap around him like an octopus, grabbing and stroking and pinching over his clothes. Bucky would laugh at the juxtaposition of collected Captain America to desperately horny Steve, but it’s just so _hot_.

 

“C’mon, bed. Before you actually manage to penetrate my belly-button with your dick,” Bucky says when he manages to get his mouth free, and Steve flushes further and pointedly stops grinding his cock against Bucky’s lower abdomen and groin.

 

“Would serve you right for leaving me hanging like this,” he mutters, but quirks a wry smile and all but hauls Bucky around the dividing wall, down the hall and into the bedroom.

 

“You were so good for me though, Stevie, so perfect,” Bucky says warmly when they’re in the bedroom, and pushes Steve back onto the bed, shedding his jeans, underwear and t-shirt before climbing over him. “So _good_. Bending over so I could fuck you, pull your hair and come in your ass without letting you have yours.”

 

Steve’s eyes get that spaced-out, glazed look again as Bucky straddles his hips, and he shivers and bites his lip when Bucky trails one hand down his chest and back up again. When Bucky uses both hands to cup the curves of his pecs and squeeze them, Steve closes his eyes with a full-body shudder. His dick jerks against his belly, already drooling and wet again.

 

“Look at your pretty tits here baby,” Bucky breathes, entranced by how full and hard they feel in his hands, how Steve jerks when he pinches at his pale pink nipples.

 

“Oh god. Buck, please,” Steve groans, hands twisting in the bedspread.

 

“No coming until I say, remember,” Bucky warns, and tries his best to push Steve’s tits together, to make cleavage. “Do you think you could come like this sometime? With me playing with your tits, getting them all slicked up and fucking them? I’d let you put your head up so you could lick the head of my cock with each thrust – try and suck it into your mouth. Would I come on your tits, in your mouth or on your face, do you think?”

 

“I’ll come. If you keep- oh god, I’ll come,” Steve whispers, and Bucky’s a little shocked at how much this is working Steve up, but _god that is so hot_.

 

He takes pity and backs off, shuffling back a bit to make room so he can drape himself over Steve, leaving off the rough rubbing and pinching on Steve’s pecs. Steve opens his eyes just a little, long dark lashes a shade for the dramatic blue of them. Bucky just gives a sultry smile and kisses him – short, sensual nibbles at his lips with the occasional swipe of tongue, exploring the corners of Steve’s mouth and the lush lower lip, taking his time until Steve relaxes a bit under him.

 

“You’re getting hard again,” Steve says after a while, sounding curious; obviously feeling Bucky’s cock thickening between them. In reality, it had never gone completely soft – Bucky has a weirdly fast recovery period.

 

“Hard to avoid, with you,” Bucky says lightly, making Steve snort in amusement. Truth is, he’s barely touched himself all week. It wasn’t until Wednesday, when Steve called from Berlin, that he could admit to himself it was because of a painfully delicious kind of anticipation of seeing Steve again.

 

“Fuck me,” Steve says, and Bucky’s dick takes definite notice of that, giving a hard jerk.

 

“Yeah?” Bucky says, and grins. “You like the idea of me fucking you when you’re already wet with my come?”

 

“Oh my god, how do you do this?” Steve says weakly, laughing a bit,e but he’s already trying to spread his legs under Bucky – who accommodates, clambering to slide his thighs between Steve’s, so his dick now rests against the cleft of his ass.

 

“Same rule though, Stevie – don’t get to come without my say,” he says, and Steve gives him a dark look.

 

“You’re going to kill me – ah!” he’s cut off when Bucky reaches between them, positioning the head of his cock at Steve’s slick hole and pushing in just a little. He’s all soft and still loose from just being fucked, and it’s easy to slide in all the way, Steve tilting his hips and wrapping his legs around Bucky’s waist.

 

“You’re perfect, just like this,” Bucky says, feeling drunk with pleasure, kissing every bit of Steve he can reach – down his jaw, the cords of his neck, the hard ridge of his collarbone – and shoves his hands under Steve’s hips, rocking slowly into him. “I told you I’m gonna take care of you and I will, just gotta be patient.”

 

“You feel really good Buck,” Steve says, hands roaming up and down the muscles of Bucky’s back, his eyes drifting closed and head tipping back. “I thought about this all week. You inside me. Your mouth and hands and cock.”

 

They take it slower, this time – Bucky isn’t so desperate with desire anymore, and while Steve hasn’t come and is still on a fine edge of pleasure and need, he lets Bucky do the work, lets him take over. After a while of slowly rolling his hips, Bucky starts moving with slow, patient thrusts, hooking one arm under one of Steve’s knees to open him up further, making Steve moan and pull Bucky even closer so they can kiss – a messy tangle of mouths. It’s almost hypnotic like this – Steve starting to pant with every thrust, the feel of sinking into him repeatedly, the slick kisses. Bucky could stay like this forever, with no need to orgasm, because this is just so flawless.

 

Steve’s not in the same boat though – after a while he starts to try and twist his hips up further to Bucky’s, breathing hard and gleaming with sweat, biting at his lip repeatedly between kisses. Bucky can feel his orgasm not far off, and speeds up a little; puts some power behind his thrusts. Steve gives a desperate sounding moan, because yeah, that’s the spot, Bucky’s found it and starts hitting it again and again, until Steve arches his back and shoves a hand between them to grab his own cock – not to jerk it, like Bucky thinks at first, but to squeeze _hard_. He’s stopping himself from coming.

 

“You’re doing so good baby, Christ you feel so good. Just hold off for me, yeah? I promise you’re gonna have the orgasm of your life, just hold on a little longer,” Bucky murmurs to him, already feeling his toes curling, his spine curving with pleasure.

 

“Oh fuck, _Bucky_ ,” Steve gasps, eyes damp with the effort not to come, and that more than anything sets him off – Bucky gives a long, loud cry, because this orgasm burns through him slow and hard where the last one was a furious flash. He fucks into Steve with a few more hard, sharp thrusts, feeling how wet his ass is with slick and come, and all but falls on top of Steve like his strings have been cut.

 

Steve is patient, all things considered. Even though they’re not moving anymore, he’s still breathing hard, hand still wrapped around his cock between them. When Bucky slowly pulls out he makes a little choked sound, and is painfully desperate when they kiss – sucking on Bucky’s tongue and chasing his lips when he pulls away. He’s got the thousand-yard stare of a well-fucked man, tinged with a shivery need that Bucky shouldn’t find so gorgeous, but does.

 

“Got more slick in here baby?” he manages to ask after a while, and Steve just kind of glances at the bedside table in answer. Bucky rummages around in the drawer until he finds some lube, squeezing some out onto his fingers and managing to creakily drag himself up to his knees and reach behind himself.

 

Steve watches him with a kind of spacey concentration for a while, before apparently figuring out what Bucky is doing. His expression changes by degrees – first puzzled, then realisation, and _then_ borderline ravenous. Bucky keeps fucking himself on his fingers as this happens, stretching himself open, and gives Steve his best come hither look.

 

A minute later Steve has effortlessly flipped them over so he’s on top, so Bucky’d say it works pretty well.

 

“Yes?” Steve says, shoving his way between Bucky’s thighs, and god, this man is so perfect, how could he say no?

 

“Yes, fuck yes,” Bucky says, and reverses their earlier position, wrapping his legs around Steve’s waist.

 

Steve pauses when he grips his cock between them, so slick and wet now it doesn’t really need the lubricant he’s stroking on to himself. He gives Bucky an uncertain look. “You’re not…” he trails off, and gestures at Bucky’s cock, now only half-hard.

 

“I wanna feel you, Stevie,” Bucky says quietly. “I don’t need to come to enjoy it.”

 

And it does feel good – Steve slowly pressing inside of him, clearly holding back despite his desperation to orgasm. Bucky has always liked being fucked, always liked the feeling of being stretched open by cock, but this is different somehow, it’s _more_. His whole body feels over sensitised – he can’t even imagine how Steve’s skin feels right now, having just been fucked without getting to come, _twice_ – but for Bucky it feels amazing and he gives a long, appreciative moan that seems to reassure Steve.

 

“Oh Bucky, oh god, Buck-” Steve is saying, dipping his head to kind of mash his face into Bucky’s collarbone, and starts a slow, rolling rhythm of thrusts that make Bucky breathe hard through the sensation. He waits just long enough, just until Steve is making noises that seem to border on painful.

 

“Steve,” Bucky says, turning his mouth to brush against his ear. “Come now.”

 

And beautifully, Steve does – giving a sharp, choked-off cry and snapping his hips in short, hard thrusts, muscles bunching under Bucky’s hands. His back arches up and away, his head tips up, and his face is a picture of astonished and grateful surrender, like he’s just accidentally found enlightenment through sex. And then his face goes slack, and he slumps carefully down onto Bucky.

 

“Oh baby you were so good,” Bucky murmurs soothingly, stroking a hand up and down Steve’s back. “So perfect.”

 

He’s happy to stay there for a while, just holding Steve close and muttering praise to him – Steve’s clearly still got enough presence of mind to keep his full weight off Bucky, but Bucky likes the feeling anyway. Eventually Steve rolls away with a moan, and boy does he look _wrecked_ – glazed over and lost in a kind of all-encompassing bliss that’s got him high as a kite.

 

Bucky manages to herd Steve gently to the shower, soaping him up and cleaning him under the spray, and Steve stays spaced out and blissed as he does, pliant under Bucky’s direction but wanting to stay close and be held. Bucky is happy to let him drift, and gets them dried off and gets Steve into bed. He darts out to the kitchen, finds some chocolate in the fridge, and is back in the bedroom with those and a glass of water just as Steve starts looking around in confusion.

 

“ _Buck_ ,” he says, like Bucky was gone for a lifetime and not just a minute, and pulls him into the bed to kiss him.

 

Bucky feeds Steve the chocolate slowly, in between sips of water, and Steve starts to surface slowly – his gaze a little more focused, blinking more often and not quite so boneless. Bucky sets aside the water and chocolate, and slides down in the bed to pull him into his arms and kiss him.

 

“Thank you,” Steve mumbles against is lips, and Bucky doesn’t know what to say to that, because if he opens his mouth the only thing that would come out would be, ‘ _I would do anything for you_.’

 

They lie in silence for a while, with Steve pressing his face into Bucky’s neck. He occasionally shivers once in a while, even with the blankets over them and the room warm. Bucky strokes his back and holds him, starting to feel like he fucked up – took Steve too deep, too fast. Didn’t tell him what could happen. Put him in something a lot like subspace without telling him what to expect. Fuck.

 

“You know I tried to live in Brooklyn, after what happened in DC?” Steve says after a while, and Bucky can’t figure out what that has to do with anything, but just listens anyway. “Got an apartment. Started trying to make a life for myself – something like it anyway. Then a Hydra cell attacked my building, trying to get to me. Took my neighbour Patty hostage. Broke her arm in three places before the rest of the Avengers came in and I could get her to safety. Thing is, they were holding her in her apartment, using her as leverage against me, with her three year old daughter watching her mother cry and beg for her life.”

 

“Jesus. _Fuck_ Hydra,” Bucky says with feeling, and Steve gives him a squeeze and huffs.

 

“So that’s how I wound up here, living in this… what did you call it, sky palace?” he says derisively, and Bucky strokes his hair.

 

“You know I didn’t mean anything by it. It’s just a lot, for someone who has never had the Tony Stark experience before,” he says, and Steve gives a little snort. He doesn’t seem inclined to take his face out of Bucky’s increasingly sweaty neck anytime soon though. Hiding.

 

“It’s a lot for someone who still sees himself as the runty kid from Brooklyn too,” Steve says quietly. “So I’m living in this ivory tower so Hydra doesn’t slaughter my neighbours out of revenge for blowing up their aerial death ships. They’re still _out_ there. More than I ever imagined during the war, doing more horrific things than Schmidt ever dreamed of, and… I just can’t help thinking that I died for nothing.”

 

Bucky dry swallows, because it’s been kind of easy to ignore that the sweet, bashful and hot as hell guy he’s been fucking _also_ nose-dived a plane into the artic to save the world. Sacrificed everything, thinking he would stop the very evil that now means he can’t have a regular apartment in Brooklyn without his neighbours getting killed.

 

“It shouldn’t be this way,” he says simply, and Steve takes a shuddering breath against him. “You don’t owe this fight your life. You never did. No fucking planes, you hear me Rogers?”

 

Steve gives a watery sounding laugh against his throat, and something that might be a choked-off sob. “Would you miss me, Buck?”

 

“I won’t fucking have to, because you’re going to come home intact every time,” he says fiercely. Steve gives a tiny nod, and Bucky listens to him breathing, matching their inhales and exhales, until Steve’s breath evens out with the cadence of sleep.

 

To me, he thinks. Come home _to me_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky takes a dominant role during sex at Steve's request, and while he makes it clear he'll stop everything if Steve asks, they don't negotiate the scene beforehand or have set safe words. Bucky edges Steve, including orgasm denial, but the sex is consensual and they both enjoy it.


	3. Bucky stops the whole being an asshole thing.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So then I hosted the Russian ballet for a month on my yacht to convince Gotham society I had a debauched but rock solid alibi. You even listening, man?” Sam asks on the phone, and Steve blinks back to awareness, realising he’s been spacing out thinking about Bucky while Sam talks at him. Sam might be spending most of his time in DC these days but they still talk every other day.
> 
> “Sorry. I’m just… distracted,” he says guiltily, and practically hears Sam leer.
> 
> “I bet you are. Nat finally spilled the beans. How is Bucky the Boyfriend? Is he hot? Damn, I bet he’s hot, you went and got yourself some fine-ass man-candy to break the drought.”
> 
> “He’s so hot, Sam,” Steve confesses in a rush, feeling a bit like a teenage girl. “But he’s also really just… so good. Smart and kind and funny and…”
> 
> “Mmm. You got it bad,” Sam muses, and it’s like being doused in cold water. Steve might have it bad but Bucky is a sex worker. His job and the monogamy Steve ultimately wants are non-compatible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen. 
> 
> I mean to write a thing with porn. A lot of porn - mission accomplished! - but then this bit of plot crept in?
> 
> The type that neatly leaves the story open for a sequel I guess?
> 
> Anyway I am so thankful to the people leaving kudos and comments, and despite the plot this is possibly one of the most fun things I've ever written. And I love shrunkyclunks.
> 
> Okay I'm done.

 

Steve feels oddly light, the next morning. He wakes with the sun rising over Manhattan and when Bucky stirs beside him they start kissing before either of them is truly awake – long and slow and deep. Steve pulls Bucky on top of him, languid with pleasure and wanting nothing more than to be slowly fucked in the warm nest of their blankets, and Bucky complies with gratifying enthusiasm.

 

He tries not to think about it too hard, what they’re doing, and manages to not-think all the way through their shower (Buck slips down to his knees in front of Steve and sucks him off like it’s worship), until Bucky has started the coffee in the kitchen and is singing off-key raiding the fridge. And Steve, keeping his mind blank, picks up the envelope of cash on top of his dresser, carries it to Bucky’s satchel in the elevator alcove and stuffs it inside.

 

He is aware, even as he tries not to think about it, that drawing an arbitrary line in the sand with a wad of cash isn’t doing much to create emotional boundaries between them. He told Bucky all that _stuff_ last night, and Buck just held him close and let him talk and god, he feels light this morning.

 

“Babe! Come and get some toast! You want the whole loaf, or what?” Bucky calls from the kitchen, and it makes Steve grin.

 

*

 

“So then I hosted the Russian ballet for a month on my yacht to convince Gotham society I had a debauched but rock solid alibi. You even listening, man?” Sam asks on the phone, and Steve blinks back to awareness, realising he’s been spacing out thinking about Bucky while Sam talks at him. Sam might be spending most of his time in DC these days but they still talk every other day.

 

“Sorry. I’m just… distracted,” he says guiltily, and practically _hears_ Sam leer.

 

“I bet you are. Nat finally spilled the beans. How is _Bucky_ the _Boyfriend_? Is he hot? Damn, I bet he’s hot, you went and got yourself some fine-ass man-candy to break the drought.”

 

“He’s _so_ hot, Sam,” Steve confesses in a rush, feeling a bit like a teenage girl. “But he’s also really just… so _good_. Smart and kind and funny and…”

 

“Mmm. You got it bad,” Sam muses, and it’s like being doused in cold water. Steve might have it _bad_ but Bucky is a sex worker. His job and the monogamy Steve ultimately wants are non-compatible.

 

For a moment a tiny crack opens up in Steve’s mind, and he imagines Bucky having sex with other people on other days of the week – kissing them and laughing with them, holding them close and listening to their deepest fears, because while he obviously has a soft spot for Steve, it’s still partly his _job_. It makes him feel sad and sick to think about, even as he wonders if he’s being small and selfish by not being able to accept an emotional attachment with someone who has sex with other people, but he shuts it all down mentally. He is what he is – he wants monogamy in a relationship, therefore he cannot have a relationship with Bucky.

 

Even if it’s becoming apparent that Bucky wants a relationship with him.

 

“I’ve lost you again, you’re daydreaming,” Sam is saying in his ear. “Is he that dreamy for real, man? Are you writing his name and your name and drawing hearts around them?”

 

“It’s only been a few weeks,” Steve says, feeling uncomfortable with the lie about what Bucky is to him, exactly. But while he can tell Sam most things, he doesn’t want to discuss this. He knows full well that Sam would size up the tangled emotions and Steve’s feelings about Bucky’s job and tell him, sternly, that he needs to end it.

 

He won’t. He can’t. Not yet.

 

“Seems like you’re in pretty deep though, Steve,” Sam says.

 

You have no idea, Steve thinks.

 

*

 

So Saturday night becomes Bucky’s night, and Steve feels like the rest of his life now resolves around waiting to see Bucky. He goes on missions with the team, as the Avengers slowly but steadily work through 70 years of Hydra intel – they’re like roaches, hidden under the most innocuous of cover organisations. And every time he goes on a mission he’s anxious that he won’t be back in time to see Bucky, he’ll miss their standing Saturday night… appointment.

 

He hasn’t dared to ask if Bucky is free another night, because he doesn’t think he could handle knowing that Bucky has _other_ standing appointments.

 

Saturday nights though… Saturday nights it’s as though time slows down and there is only the two of them in the world. The sex is often frantic and intense to start with, as though they can’t get enough of each other in that first hour after a week apart. Bucky seems on a mission to fuck and be fucked by Steve in every corner of his apartment – in the ridiculously large whirlpool tub in the bathroom, on the sofa, on the floor next to the sofa, against the fridge, over the kitchen counter…

 

But for all that the sex is amazing, it’s the quiet time after they’ve first gotten it out of their system that Steve comes to look forward to the most. They sprawl naked on the sofa eating popcorn while Bucky insists on making him watch all of the Highlander films, which are _terrible_. They compare notes on growing up in Brooklyn almost a century apart. Bucky tells him he’s got a sister in med school named Becca, and Steve can’t help but wonder if that’s why he does what he does – money for her. He doesn’t ask.

 

Bucky mentions his time in Afghanistan a few times, or how he first enlisted at all of 18, but won’t say anything further than that. Steve assumes he did a tour or two and clocked out, but doesn’t ask about that either. Bucky listens quietly, attentively when Steve tells him about his mother, how she was the best person he knew, and doesn’t once ask for a Howling Commandoes or Red Skull story.

 

After seven weeks of this, Steve kisses Bucky goodbye at the elevator one Sunday morning and watches the doors close after him, and sits down on the floor right there and puts his head in his hands.

 

He’s in love. He loves Bucky Barnes. Fuck.

 

He feels sick. He feels stupid, for getting himself into this in the first place. He feels miserable, and worst of all he just wants Bucky to come make him feel better, but he can’t have that because now he really has to stop. He has to end it with Bucky.

 

Then the Avengers alert goes off on his phone.

 

*

 

Seven weeks. Seven weeks of lying to Steve and Bucky isn’t even sure how to tell the truth. He’s no longer actively lying – doesn’t say anything about being a sex worker – but he _also_ doesn’t say anything about the envelopes of cash Steve sneaks into his satchel every week. Because he’s a fucking asshole who just wants to be with Steve even if Steve wants the emotional safety of someone he’s paying.

 

The money is all stuffed in his drawer. He doesn’t even need it.

 

He works during the week, getting tangled up hunting security breeches through code all day, and at night he obsessively tracks the missions the Avengers run – Romania, Gambia, Argentina. And when they aren’t on missions, or there’s no sighting of them on one, he’s checking back through paparazzi photos of Steve buying coffee, Steve running in the park, Steve signing autographs. God, it’s pathetic.

 

It’s stalking his not-boyfriend that means Bucky has a newsfeed up in time to see the Avengers are on a mission in Atlanta, one Wednesday night. Bucky sits glued to the shaky cell phone footage that has just gone live, several hours after the actual fight happened – the footage shows its just near dusk there. He sees Steve fighting some asshole with a skull-like mask on, and the dude has some kind of mechanical fists fitted over his arms, and when a stray shooter manages a lucky shot that grazes Steve’s neck (not deep, please don’t be deep), skull-head takes advantage of Steve staggering to pound into him with the mechanical fists.

 

Bucky watches in horror as Steve gets the ever-loving shit beaten out of him for the four minutes it takes him to get his shield up, get his feet under him, and for him to turn the tables on skull-head. Right before the footage ends, Steve yanks off his helmet, which is _cracked_ , and Bucky can see his face is a mass of blood and bruises.

 

He turns off the screen, grabs his keys and runs out the door without another thought.

 

*

 

The talking elevator is not as friendly as he usually is when Bucky gets to the Tower. After he requests Steve’s floor, the elevator goes quiet for a long time, and the elevator doesn’t immediately go up.

 

“You are not expected tonight, Sergeant Barnes,” elevator says.

 

“Tell Steve to let me up or I’ll climb 80 flights of fucking stairs to get to him the old fashioned way,” Bucky growls. Another long moment and the elevator begins to go up.

 

When the door opens and Bucky steps out, he sees Steve sitting at his dining table, still wearing his tac pants but stripped down to an undershirt – his face doesn’t look as bad as it did on TV, and the blood has been cleaned up some, but there’s still a lot of cuts and bruising and a deep gouge on his neck. Steve’s expression is completely flat as he watches Bucky cross to him.

 

“Jesus, are you okay? I came as soon as I saw on TV,” Bucky says, reaching to touch gingerly at a cut on Steve’s cheek, but Steve jerks his head away.

 

“You shouldn’t have come. It’s Wednesday,” Steve says, sounding cold in a way Bucky hasn’t ever heard him before.

 

“You’re kidding me, right? I see you like this, I’m coming,” Bucky says, stepping back, finally _really_ registering that this is not the sweet, cuddly Steve who usually greets him.

 

Of course, that’s when Tony Stark walks around the corner from the hallway.

 

“Why is your first aid kit so comprehensive? Should I be worried? I’m worried,” Stark says, and then notices Bucky as he sets an actually quite enormous red first aid kit on the table next to Steve. “Oh hey. You Bucky, the boyfriend?”

 

“Yes,” Bucky says.

 

“No,” Steve says at the same time.

 

A pause.

 

“Um,” Stark says.

 

“It’s Wednesday. You’re only booked on Saturdays,” Steve says, and Bucky feels it like a physical blow.

 

“What the fuck,” he whispers, staring at Steve, at the misery starting to seep through the cracks of his façade. “What the fuck are you doing, Steve?”

 

“I wanted to get rid of my virginity, to get sexual experience, and now I have it,” Steve says, and despite everything his voice is just as clear and firm as ever. Bucky feels like he’s getting dizzy.

 

“Holy shit,” Stark says.

 

“Stop it, Steve. It’s more than that and you _know_ it,” Bucky says.

 

“I don’t want to pay someone for sex anymore, and I’m not cut out for a relationship with a sex worker. So we’re done.”

 

“Holy _shit_ ,” Stark says.

 

“I’m not a sex worker,” Bucky says, and when Steve starts shaking his head he grabs his arm. “I’m _not_. You made an assumption, that night we met – my fucking dad’s friend David was being an asshole and made you think I was an escort and then we got talking and I just never… I never told you the truth because I wanted you. I wanted _you_. And you kept up all this talk of emotional boundaries and kept fucking sneaking money to me and… and I’m sorry. I’m a data security developer. I sub-contract to Stark Industries. You’re the only person I’ve slept with in the last six months.”

 

“Wait, what the fuck is your name?” Stark asks, looking into the distance. “Barnes? Did Jarvis say Barnes?”

 

“You lied to me?” Steve whispers. He looks poleaxed – like Bucky has just dealt him more harm in the last two minutes than Hydra has in a lifetime. “You’ve been lying to me for _two months_?”

 

“James Barnes, who I pulled out of a weird laboratory in a cave in Afghanistan, that James Barnes?” Stark asks suddenly, snapping his fingers. Steve whips his head around in surprise. “You _work_ for me now?”

 

“I work for Pepper Potts,” Bucky says impatiently. He squeezes Steve’s arm, but Steve shakes him off. “Steve, please, I-“

 

“I don’t care what you have to say,” Steve snaps furiously, and he’s looking at Bucky like shit on the heel of his shoe. “You are a fucking liar and I can’t trust anything you say. Get out.”

 

Bucky steps back, and back again, struck by the venom in Steve’s face. “Steve,” he says quietly, because this is- this can’t be how it ends.

 

“Leave,” Steve says flatly.

 

So Bucky goes.

 

*

 

After the elevator doors close, there is a long ringing silence, during which Steve slumps back into his chair and covers his face with his hands. He can feel tears leaking out around his fingers, but doesn’t care. Tony Stark is a good person to cry in front of. He’ll only ever mock your strengths, not your weaknesses.

 

“So… you solicited a sex worker who wasn’t actually a sex worker to lose your virginity to, and obviously fell completely in love with him and yet didn’t want a relationship because you want monogamy, but can’t or _won’t_ be with him now that you _know_ he’s not a sex worker because of the lying, do I have that right?” Stark asks after a while, putting a comforting hand on Steve’s shoulder.

 

“Yes,” Steve says, muffled into his hands, so he lifts his face, scrubbing at his eyes. “What was the laboratory in Afghanistan?”

 

“The early days of Iron Man. I found your young Sergeant in this bizarre Al Qaeda base that had a laboratory setup, strapped into a chair while they…” Tony trails off, looking suddenly very grave and staring off to one side, like he’s watching a memory.

 

“What?”

 

“Jarvis, cross-reference Sergeant Barnes’ military record, specifically his time as a POW, with Hydra recorded activity, since released by Natasha,” Tony says quietly, and Steve blanches.

 

“It may take me some time to cross-reference some of the deeper encryptions,” Jarvis says after a moment, “however surface financial records show significant funding into that region at the time, that ceased once Iron Man infiltrated several Al Qaeda bases, including the one Sergeant Barnes was being held at.”

 

A long silence.

 

“Fuck,” Steve says finally, and stands up. “Call the team.”

 

*

 

The next afternoon they are gathered around the Avengers board table, Maria at the head, Tony across from Steve with Clint next to him, Natasha next to Steve and Pepper on her other side, with Bruce at the far end of the table – Thor is off world.

 

“He went through our security checks once again after DC,” Pepper is saying, looking at some data on her tablet. Bucky’s file as a contractor is projected on the screen behind Maria, and Steve can’t quite look at it. “It came up, of course, that he’d been a POW in Afghanistan rescued by Iron Man, but with that amount of information from Shield released at that time, we weren’t looking deeply at Hydra funding into areas Stark Industries employees had been. He’s been a model contractor for four years. I hadn’t connected the dots, but it’s probably the Stark Industries scholarship and trust that was set up as a matter of course for him after the rescue that led to him being a data security developer for us now.”

 

“Records of his release and the location he was held are limited to Tony’s reports,” Maria says. “Iron Man destroyed the laboratory during the rescue, and the report states it was – and I quote – ‘a weird lab-type place with the kid in a dentist chair and really bad lighting.’ Barnes remained in a coma for two weeks, and said he could recall nothing about his three months of captivity once he awoke. Medical records state he was malnourished, as is to be expected, but otherwise had no obvious scarring or signs of abuse other than a series of needle marks, most likely from an IV line.”

 

Steve’s heart aches, to think of it – Bucky alone is some Hydra-funded hellhole for three months. This, he realises, is how Bucky left the army; with a three month hole in his memory and a story that a guy in a metal suit rescued him.

 

“In my defence, me and the suit were still ironing out some kinks. Blowing the place up was kind of an accident,” Tony says.

 

“We know now that Hydra funded Al Qaeda activity in Afghanistan and Iraq at the time, and even placed agents in the region, but what were they doing with a lab and POWs?” Natasha asks.

 

“Human experimentation,” Bruce says darkly, and flicks something on his tablet so two highly magnified images of blood work appeared on the screen. There are arrows highlighting was looks like several anomalous cells on the image on the right. “This is Sergeant Barnes’ blood work before shipping out on the left. On the right is three months after he was rescued from Afghanistan. ”

 

“That looks like…” Tony starts, and glances at Steve, who frowns.

 

“We would see a similar affect on the cell regeneration, only more proliferate, in Cap’s blood work.”

 

“They gave him the super soldier serum. But this is only affecting one out of fifty or a hundred cells,” Steve says. He knows that the effect can be seen on _all_ of his own blood cells.

 

“I would have to assume that he was not yet exposed to vita radiation to accelerate the process. I would also bet that if we were to look at his blood now, the effect would have increased exponentially.”

 

They are all silent for some time, staring at the blood work. Finally, Clint heaves a sigh. “All right. Am I gonna be the one that says it? Is Cap’s boyfriend Hydra?”

 

“He’s not Hydra,” Steve snaps, and Natasha lays a gentle hand on his arm.

 

“Fine. Is Cap’s not-actually-an-escort Hydra?” Clint says. Steve chooses to glare at the blood work on the screen rather than him.

 

“What, you think it was an elaborate honey trap? That Hydra just happened to figure out I’m bisexual – I’ll remind you that _Natasha_ hadn’t – and used a sleeper super soldier to get into my pants for, what, some slow-moving assassination attempt?”

 

“Le petite morte?” Tony asks, and Steve kicks him under the table.

 

“You’re forgetting something,” Pepper says to them all gently. “Does _Bucky_ know he’s got the serum?”

 

*

 

Bucky spends the next week feeling alternately angry and horribly depressed. His calls to Steve go unanswered, so he boxes up those damn envelopes full of cash and sends them back to Steve by way of the Tower. He feels vindicated for about half an hour before he ends up crying face down in his bed again. This is by far the stupidest thing he’s ever done. He had Steve. He lied to Steve. He lost Steve. He has nobody to blame but himself.

 

By the following Tuesday he hasn’t showered in three days and is lying in bed at midday, watching Wizard of Oz and eating cookie dough ice cream like a cliché, when his phone rings. The Stark Industries ringtone. He’s been doing all his work in a caffeine-induced frenzy after two am, so it’s not like they have reason to complain, but the phone calls are so rare that he pretty much has to answer.

 

“This is Barnes,” he says after answering, trying not to sound like he’s been crying for six days straight, and failing.

 

“Mr Barnes, this is Pepper Potts. I need you to come in,” says actual Pepper Potts, CEO of Stark Industries and friend of Steve Rogers.

 

Two hours later he’s showered if not shaved, and wearing clean clothes that are only a little wrinkled, when instead of being directed to Ms Potts’ office, talking-elevator tells him he has reached Avengers floor three, please proceed to the board room at the far end of the corridor.

 

He does, and is quietly devastated when he walks in and Steve is there.

 

He looks… he looks good, far better than Bucky does, anyway, wearing a close-fitting black knit top, his hair stupidly spiked, his face shuttered and cold with arms folded over his chest. Bucky stares at him for way too long, and it isn’t until someone clears their throat that he realises there are other people in the room. Natasha, whom he’s met before, Tony Stark, whom he’s… sort of met, and a guy he recognises as Bruce Banner, with glasses perched on his nose. They wave him to a seat opposite them, and Bucky sneaks a sideways look at Steve. His face still looks like it’s carved from stone.

 

“We need to talk to you about Afghanistan,” Natasha says, quite gently.

 

“What? I don’t remember anything,” he says, confused. What the fuck is going on? “I don’t remember the insurgents, or any of my captivity. All I have to go on are the reports. What is this about?”

 

“We’ve re-examined your blood work both pre and post capture, since you and Cap-“ Banner starts, and then cuts himself off by clearing his throat. Stark rolls his eyes.

 

“Since _Steve_ and I, _what_?” he asks, turning his head slowly to look at Steve, who is starting to look embarrassed.

 

“Look, Pretty Woman. Here’s how it went – you and Cap had a big fight in front of me, whatever, not important,” Stark says, waving a hand. “I remembered I pulled you out of a literal cave in the desert. You’ve been lying to Steve, and frankly, the people who lie to Steve _also_ tend to be Hydra. We cross-referenced the Shield/Hydra data that is now available to us and find that their was not only Shield funding being fed into that region, but field operatives were on the ground. You were found in a lab, so Bruce takes a closer look at your blood and finds that after your post-captivity nap, you’ve got anomalous blood cells in common with only two other people in the world. Bruce, and Steve.”

 

Bucky stares at them, starting to feel like this is an elaborate prank. “What.”

 

“Hydra gave you a slow-acting version of the super soldier serum when you were a POW,” Natasha says. “They either intended to turn you and use you, or they intended to make you a sleeper agent.”

 

Bucky turns his head to look at Steve, who is staring intently at him. “Is this some kind of a fucking joke?” Nobody answered. “ _Steve_. Do you think I’m Hydra? Do you _fucking think I’m Hydra?!”_

“No,” Steve says, and the certainty is somehow just as painful as doubt would have been.

 

“Have you noticed, in the years since your captivity, any increased feelings of strength or fitness, greater stamina or improved senses?” Natasha asks, and that catches his attention.

 

“I work out?” he says uncertainly.

 

“A lot? You’re very muscular; it must be difficult to maintain that. What happens if you skip a few weeks at the gym?”

 

“I… nothing,” Bucky says. Nothing happens, he realises. Physically he remains exactly the same. There’s a horrible sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, like he’s missed something that was right in front of him all along.

 

“You just maintain muscle mass without exercise? Ever notice your weight go up or down, even by a pound or two?” she asks, and Bucky slowly shakes his head. “When was the last time you were sick?”

 

Bucky opens his mouth, and then closes it again. No. That’s not right. He must have had a cold or flu or even a stomach bug…

 

“Not since before Afghanistan,” he says finally. His face feels numb. This can’t be right, he can’t be a fucking _super soldier_ and not even have noticed.

 

“We’d like to take some blood, with your permission,” Banner says, “and run some stamina and strength tests over a period of weeks and potentially months. We believe whatever you were given increases its effectiveness over time, and we’d like to see if we can measure that. For Steve and myself, the effects were instant. You can contribute a lot to our understanding of how the serum works.”

 

“Of course,” Bucky agrees, because he’s still half-hoping that whatever tests they give him will show categorically that Hydra was _not_ fucking around with his physiology in some crap-ass lab in the desert.

 

He looks sideways at Steve again, feeling lost, and Steve’s face is no longer closed off but sad and distant, and that feels worse somehow – as though Steve is no longer seeing him as a lover but as an Avengers’ project; the human cost of Hydra’s fuckery, very sad but ultimately removed.

 

Fuck that, Bucky thinks, closing his eyes so he doesn’t cry. Fuck that.

 

*

 

They take him to a lab, several stories up – Steve peels off some point when Bucky is too stunned and distracted to notice, so isn’t in the closed space of the elevator, which is both a relief and a disappointment. In the lab itself, Banner seems immediately more comfortable, gathering what he needs on one of the wheeling metal carts, while Natasha guides him to sit up on a stool. He sits slackly while she unbuttons one cuff of his shirt and starts rolling up his sleeve.

 

“He’s miserable, you know,” she says quietly, not looking up at him, and Bucky starts.

 

“He won’t answer my calls,” Bucky says. “I can’t… I can’t undo what I did but if I could just talk to him-”

 

“He’s stubborn. You might have noticed,” Natasha says wryly, and Bucky huffs out a sad laugh. She gives a little shrug. “He came out of the ice to work for Shield, only to find out it was Hydra all along. Everyone he knew was lying to him. Including me.”

 

“You got his trust back, though,” Bucky says curiously.

 

“Yeah. On the run from Shield with everyone trying to kill us. I don’t think you want to replicate the process.”

 

“No, not really,” Bucky says dryly. Natasha looks up at him through her lashes, pursing her lips into a little smirk.

 

“You want to win him back, Sergeant? Be steadfast. He hasn’t had a lot of that in his life, I think,” she says, and Bucky turns the words over in his mind.

 

“Why are you telling me this? We’ve only met once before this, when I was lying about being his boyfriend to you and lying about being an escort to him.”

 

She gives a little shrug. “He smiled at you. I’ve never seen him smile like that before. Like he was happy.”

 

Banner comes over then with a tray of intimidatingly large needles, so they can’t talk any further, but Bucky catches Natasha’s eye and gives her a nod of thanks.

 

*

 

At the end of the day, Steve sits alone in his apartment, watching the sun set over Manhattan. He’s in an armchair because he can’t bring himself to sink into the sofa that he and Bucky fucked on, more than once. He’s sleeping in one of the guest bedrooms for the same reason. His whole apartment is a reminder that Bucky was here, made him laugh and made him come in equal measure.

 

The last week has been painful and confusing, but no more so than today – seeing Bucky again. Bucky asking if Steve thought he was Hydra.

 

It doesn’t get any better in the following days – Steve is aware that Bucky is in the building, working with Natasha and Bruce to determine exactly what might have been done to him in a cold lab in a cave somewhere in Afghanistan. By who or what for, they still don’t know. Steve lasts all of three days before he can’t stay away any longer.

 

The training room is on the second of the Avengers floors in Tony’s Tower – in fact it takes up the entire floor, which is actually about three stories in height. There is one huge open space with padded floors and an obstacle course of rafters, platforms and ropes, accessible only by climbing walls. Tony sends little drones after them when they’re sparring and training, that will shoot tiny tags on to their clothing and beep annoyingly when someone is ‘hit’.

 

Another section, behind a reinforced glass wall, is more like a standard gym, except with equipment that can withstand both Steve and Thor’s strength and stamina. That’s where Bucky is, on a treadmill with electrodes taped to his bare chest and arms, running at a steady pace while Natasha monitors his progress. His speed, Steve notes, is too fast to be maintained for any length of time by an unenhanced human. Bucky isn’t even breaking a sweat.

 

Bucky’s stamina in bed is starting to make a lot more sense.

 

Steve is standing at one end of the glass wall, just angled so Bucky can’t see him, watching the muscles of his back ripple smoothly as he runs. He’s got skin tight exercise pants on too, moulding the curve of his ass and thighs. Steve is staring helplessly when Nat turns around, and raises one eyebrow. She turns back to Bucky and says something that makes his shoulders shake a little with laughter.

 

He winds up stalking Bucky’s sessions at the Tower like a complete sad case – drifting around the edges of training room when Bucky is there, or loitering in one of the observation rooms of Bruce’s lab with the lights out. Watching Bucky makes his chest ache, make him think over what is said and done over and over again. Would he have let Bucky into his life if he’d come clean when Steve approached him?

 

The truth is he feels heartbroken and miserable, but also angry – angry that Bucky lied, that he kept lying. He had a thousand small moments together where he could have told the truth, but didn’t – not until Steve was going to end things anyway. So Steve is angry, and he can’t just set that aside. Can he?

 

Two weeks after Bucky starts coming for his testing sessions at the Tower, Steve miss-times his exit from Bruce’s lab, and almost collides with Bucky in the corridor leading to the elevator. Bucky’s eyes widen when he sees Steve, and Natasha unobtrusively drifts away behind him, the traitor.

 

“I know you’ve been watching me,” Bucky says, voice gravelly in a way that speaks of lack of sleep.

 

“You have the serum. The research done on you really only has an application for two other people,” Steve says shortly. He tries to step forward to the elevator, but Bucky steps in front of him, putting a hand on his chest.

 

“I know I’ve hurt you. I know I did the wrong thing. But won’t you at least talk to me? Do you really want to throw away what we have?” Bucky asks quietly, staring at his own hand on Steve’s chest.

 

“I trusted you, and you took advantage of that to get me into bed,” Steve whispers, feeling his throat closing up, half-expecting the old familiar shortness of breath to follow, but it doesn’t. “Whatever we _had_ , you threw it away.”

 

“Steve,” Bucky says pleadingly, finally looking up to meet his gaze. “I am sorry, so sorry. _Please_ give me a chance to earn your trust again.”

 

His eyes are silvery-blue – Steve has a whole sketchbook filled with his eyes and face, his soft mouth and lithe body. Part of him – a big part of him – wants nothing more than to say yes, to take Bucky back upstairs and fall into bed with him. But his mind is muddled and all he can feel is that hot glowing ember of anger and humiliation in his chest.

 

“I don’t think I have trust enough left to give,” he says finally, and steps around Bucky, the elevator doors opening just in time for him to step inside. He looks back through the open doors, and Bucky is a picture of misery.

 

“I’m in love with you,” Bucky says, and Steve presses the button for the doors to close before he can cry.

 

*

 

Time stretches on after that – Bucky keeps his appointments at the Tower, and he should probably be more interested in the fact that he can apparently run much faster and further than normal people, but he isn’t much. Natasha is just bemused that he never realised – but then, after Afghanistan he would go to the gym a few times a week for a set amount of cardio exercise, never pushing beyond the amount needed to get his heart rate up. He’d viewed exercise as maintenance, and had no reason to run 20 miles at top speed on a treadmill in one afternoon.

 

He should care that Hydra apparently pumped his body full of a slow-acting super soldier serum, and should definitely care that he doesn’t remember any of it, but mostly he just feels sad and scared. He misses Steve – who no longer haunts his test sessions like a particularly unsubtle ghost – and he mostly just feels sick thinking about those three months in Afghanistan he can’t remember.

 

In retrospect, he’s been bottling that whole shit show of emotion successfully for years now. These constant reminders that some Nazi cult had complete control of him when he was just a kid aren’t doing him any favours.

 

Also he told Steve he loved him and Steve closed the elevator doors in his face. There’s that.

 

“Have you considered talking to a therapist? We can get you some names and numbers for some reputable ones,” Natasha says one afternoon.

 

It’s been five weeks since the Elevator Incident, as he’s been mentally calling it, and Natasha’s had him beating on a punching bag hooked up to sensors for the last two hours. After almost seven weeks of consistent testing, even he’s starting to notice slight increases in his strength. He swipes at his sweaty forehead with a gloved hand.

 

“What for?” he asks dumbly. They’re done for the afternoon, and Natasha starts efficiently peeling sensors from his chest rather than untying his gloves and, you know, letting him take them off himself.

 

“Afghanistan. Being experimented on. The whole thing with Steve,” she says, peeling the last one off and finally setting about untying his gloves.

 

“I’m fine,” he says automatically, and winces when she gives him a pointed look. He starts unwinding the tape from his hands. “I will be fine?”

 

“I’ve read your records Barnes. I know you didn’t get anything further than a mandatory session with your Honourable Discharge, and you haven’t followed up with anything since then. It’s a lot. It would be a lot for anybody. And you’re learning about what was done to you at a time when you’re also dealing with…” Natasha waves abstractly towards the floors above them, where Steve’s apartment is.

 

“I’ll think about it,” he promises.

 

“Good. Because you know…” Natasha gives a significant pause, and then a _what the hell_ kind of shrug. “You know why Bruce and Tony are so interested in the extent of your capabilities, right?”

 

He stares at her. Blinks. Because… because no, that can’t be right. But on the other hand, it makes a sick kind of sense. “They want to _recruit_ me?”

 

“The more enhanced people on the team, the less likely the Hulk gets called on,” Natasha explains. “And Tony keeps trying to cut back on his time in the field…”

 

“Are they _nuts_?!” Bucky asks, voice raising a little too loud. “They want me on the Avengers with Steve – who _hates_ me?”

 

“He doesn’t hate you, calm down. He’s angry and hurt, but think about the reasons for why he tried to ‘break up’ with you when he thoughts you were an escort. He was too attached.”

 

“Well he’s sure as shit not attached anymore,” Bucky says with a bitter laugh, slinging his towel and backpack over his shoulder and picking up his drink bottle, heading towards the showers.

 

“No, not those ones, they’re getting fixed. Thor was planet-side yesterday, there was some lightning gone astray, I don’t know,” Natasha says, efficiently steering him in the other direction, towards the elevator. “There’s a residential gym a few floors up for those of us that don’t need the treadmill to dial to 11, you can use that.”

 

Bucky just nods, stepping into the elevator and scrubbing the towel over his face as Natasha chooses the floor. He suddenly feels raw with it all – Natasha’s probing questions and advice flaying him open, no matter how accurate or insightful.

 

“I just feel like…” he starts as the elevator doors open and he steps out automatically, only to realise that Natasha hasn’t stepped out with him. And this isn’t a shared floor with a residential gym – this is Steve’s apartment.

 

“Jarvis, tell me where to find-” Steve asks, walking around the corner. He stops when he sees Bucky, who whirls in time to see the elevator doors closing and Natasha smiling at him.

 

“Fuck!” he says, and his voice cracks on the word as he turns back to Steve. “I’m sorry. She told me the locker rooms on the training floor needed repairing. Brought me here instead. Sorry.”

 

Steve just looks… worried. Wearing simple loose track pants and one of his ridiculous t-shirts, he steps slowly towards Bucky like he’s approaching a wounded animal. “Are you all right?”

 

“I’m fine, I’m fucking fine,” Bucky says, rubbing roughly at his face again, because he can feel his eyes growing hot and achy and fuck if he’ll cry in front of Steve.

 

“You’re clearly _not_ fine,” Steve says firmly, gripping his shoulders with warm hands. And that does it, of course – Bucky starts crying, hot tears rolling down over his cheeks, breath coming in ugly big sobs.

 

It gets even worse, because Steve starts making gentle shushing noises, folding Bucky against his chest and rubbing his back soothingly. It makes Bucky cry even harder, because Steve is warm and smells like his detergent and sunshine and skin, and it’s been two months since Bucky’s been held by him.

 

“Tell me what’s wrong,” Steve says gently, when Bucky’s sobs have died down and he’s just breathing roughly into Steve’s chest.

 

“I just… fuck, I could put it behind me because I didn’t remember it, you know? If I didn’t know what they did then it couldn’t have been too bad. Did you know Bruce has been doing experiments to test my cellular regeneration? And I heal faster. So… so what if they did fucking torture me and there was just no way of knowing because by the time Tony rescued me I was healed up?” Bucky says, all in a rush, and pulls his head up to look at Steve, practically nose-to-nose. “But I can’t even really care about that because I come here and all I can think is… how much I miss you. I _miss_ you, Steve.”

 

There is an electric tension between them, and Bucky’s afraid to move in case it breaks – it’s Steve who moves, tipping his head forward to brush their noses together. Bucky hardly dares to breathe, just wanting to drown himself in the blue of Steve’s eyes.

 

“I miss you too, Buck,” he says quietly, and tilts his head to press his lips to Bucky’s.

 

It’s perfect. The perfect kiss – Bucky is trembling with want but Steve pulls him in even closer, fitting him to the perfect lines of his body and sweeping his tongue against Bucky’s mouth so they both moan with want and open to the kiss. Bucky manages to get his arms from in between them – from when he’d sort of collapsed into Steve’s arms – and wind them around his neck, wanting to feel Steve against every inch of him.

 

They kiss, and kiss and kiss, long hot kisses with sliding tongues and gentle nips, Steve sucking at his bottom lip so Bucky moans and his hips jerk against Steve because he is so achingly, heavily hard and can feel Steve is too. Steve lifts him suddenly, whirling them so Bucky is pressed against the wall of the elevator alcove, fitting one strong thigh between Bucky’s and grinding their hips together, gasping into Bucky’s mouth.

 

“Please, please, oh god, please –“ Bucky mutters, not even sure what he’s asking for. Just more, more of this, for it to never end because he has missed this _so much_.

 

It’s Steve who starts manoeuvring them towards the bedroom, complicated by their unwillingness to stop kissing or even just let go of one another. He shuffles them around the dividing wall and into the hall, where there’s a break against a wall long enough for Bucky to yank his t-shirt up and off and start mouthing at the miles of perfect pale skin exposed. Steve lets out an inarticulate groan, thumping his head back against the wall and threading his fingers into Bucky’s hair to yank him back up for another kiss.

 

They stumble into the bedroom, shoving at each other’s pants and underwear and kicking them off, and Steve pushes Bucky down onto the bed and crawls over him, eyes hot with desire and emotion – the mood changes again, less desperate and frenetic as Steve lowers the weight of his body onto Bucky and kisses him slowly, tenderly.

 

“I don’t want to be apart from you anymore,” he whispers, a little brokenly, and Bucky hitches a breath and pulls him into a searing kiss.

 

Steve fumbles in the bedside drawer until he comes up with a tube of slick, coating his fingers as Bucky spreads his legs wide apart eagerly. It’s cold at first – one long finger pushing steadily into him while he tries to breathe, tries not to float away – but Steve is kissing his chest, flicking his tongue over Bucky’s nipple and sucking bruises onto the skin over his ribs. He moans when one finger becomes two, a stinging burn that threatens to short out his brain, and by the time a third is pumping relentlessly into him, Steve closes his mouth over the head of his cock and _sucks_ , making Bucky give a hoarse shout. He’d shove his hips up but Steve is pinning him with his other arm draped across his waist, tentatively sucking Bucky deeper, setting a slow rhythm that gets more certain with each incoherent sound Bucky makes – somehow they’d never gotten to Steve doing this, in all their weeks of Saturday nights.

 

“Steve god, _now_ Steve please, I want – I want you to fuck me _oh god_ ,” Bucky gasps out when he feels like he could just go off in Steve’s mouth and die a happy man. Steve pulls away, both fingers and mouth, and settles himself between Bucky’s thighs, pressing forward for a slow, lingering kiss while Bucky winds his legs around him.

 

He slicks his cock up and starts to push in slowly, one hand braced on the mattress beside Bucky’s ribs, the other guiding his cock, and Steve’s expression is one of pure amazement as he watches his cock sink slowly into Bucky’s hole. It feels _perfect_ , like every nerve ending has been stretched too thin until now and snapped back to their rightful place with Steve inside him to the hilt.

 

“I love you, I love you Steve, I –oh god,” he babbles, completely incapable of stopping himself, and Steve looks up and gives him a blindingly beautiful smile in response.

 

When Steve starts moving, he settles with his forearms either side of Bucky’s head, fingers tangling in his hair, and they kiss as he rocks back and forth, their chests and bellies sliding together, Bucky’s cock pressed against Steve’s abdomen, as close as they can get. It’s breathtakingly intimate, and they’re both too wound up to last long, so Bucky clutches and strokes at every inch of Steve’s skin he can get, wanting to feel all of him, in case it’s some kind of mirage in the desert and when it’s all over it will be like it never existed.

 

Steve’s thrusts get harder, quicker, and Bucky moans as his cock drags perfectly over his prostate with every stroke – then Steve shoves a hand under his hip and tilts him just so, and Bucky can’t hold back anymore, jetting streaks of come between them, arching up with a hoarse cry, feeling his toes actually curl with the force of his pleasure. Steve makes a little sound, and shoves hard into Bucky for another few strokes, coming with a noise that is pure vowels and slumping down on top of Bucky.

 

He drifts for a few minutes, feeling pleasant aftershocks and Steve’s comforting weight, until his brain decides to intrude. Maybe Steve will get his bearings and roll away with cold silence. Maybe it was just the heat of the moment and not the start of something new and better between them. Maybe Steve is already regretting this, and planning how to awkwardly let Bucky down.

 

Instead Steve lifts himself up onto his elbows, presses a long kiss Bucky’s mouth, and gives him that bashful smile, the one that makes his lips curl up at the corners.

 

“Hi,” he says quietly, and Bucky gives him a little smile in return.

 

“You are heavy as fuck,” he tells Steve, who snorts with amusement and rolls them to the side, somehow getting Bucky’s leg in a position under his waist that isn’t crushing it, all while staying inside him.

 

“I want to… to try again,” Steve says when they’re settled, nose-to-nose sharing a pillow. “And I love you.”

 

Breath catching, Bucky feels his eyes go wide, and can’t say anything for a long time, feeling his heart hammering in his chest.

 

“I love you too,” he whispers. “And um, maybe this is a little late in the game, but wanna go on an actual date with me sometime?”

 

“I’d like that,” Steve says, still smiling. He’s threading his fingers into Bucky’s hair, nails scraping over his scalp in a way that makes him want to melt into a boneless lump on the sheets. Steve pauses. “But you’re gonna stay tonight, right?”

 

“Yeah, just try and get rid of me,” Bucky says, and leans in to kiss him again.

 

*

 

They’re eating Chinese food with chopsticks out of paper cartons on the sofa later, at either end with their legs all tangled up in the middle, when Steve says, “I realised I was in love with you. That’s why I wanted to break it off. Because I thought… if you _were_ a sex worker that it wouldn’t be fair of me to ask you to stop. But I couldn’t handle the idea of… well.”

 

“I meant it. There was nobody for a few months before you, and there’s only been you since we met,” Bucky says, and gives an awkward shrug. “But I pretty much let my dick do the thinking and then I was scared to tell you the truth.”

 

“Nice to know I’m irresistible,” Steve says dryly, and Bucky kicks at his ankle.

 

“You kind of are, shut up,” he says, and then chews intently, trying to figure out how to ask what he wants to ask. Nothing like jumping in feet first, he supposes. “Why have you changed your mind? About having trust enough left to give?”

 

Steve stops eating, but continues staring down into his food carton like all the answers are at the bottom. “You know you never told me the thing I missed that I absolutely had to catch up on? Every person I meet does it. I have notebooks full of suggestions from people. It’s well meaning, sure – people love this album, or that movie, or there’s a book I should know. But the minute people realise I’m Captain America, I’m _othered_. And people inadvertently remind me that I’m not like them, as soon as we meet.”

 

“I made you watch Highlander with me?” Bucky says, confused. Steve waves it off with his chopsticks.

 

“Yeah, but not because I’d _missed_ it. I think if I’d grown up in this time period and _seen_ it already, you still would have made me watch it with you. You have _never once_ reminded me that I don’t belong here,” he says, and his gaze is so focused and intent Bucky feels an itch of discomfort – not from Steve, but about the experience Steve is revealing.

 

“You do belong here. You’re _here_. You belong,” he says.

 

If he thinks about it later he’ll probably get really indignantly angry on Steve’s behalf, but right now he’s just trying to relate Steve’s experience to their relationship. Not-relationship. Whatever has been happening for the last two months.

 

“You may be the only person on this planet who believes that,” Steve says with a sad smile, and then holds up a hand when Bucky opens his mouth to contest that. “I have the Avengers, don’t get me wrong, who are a kind of family in and of themselves. But they know Captain America first. Steve second. And that’s okay, but until I met you… I realised I hadn’t known anyone to put me first. Who completely did not care that I’m the guy with the shield too.”

 

“The shield is fine, it’s the helmet that’s dumb,” Bucky says, gratified when Steve laughs.

 

“So I missed you. And it wasn’t getting better with time. I started thinking… there were times when you tried to tell me something and I cut you off, or something interrupted. You did try to tell me, didn’t you?” Steve asks.

 

“Not hard enough.”

 

“And everything else… everything else was real, wasn’t it?” Steve asks quietly. When Bucky nods, he gives a firm nod too. “I can trust that. I can trust that I always knew who you are, even when this fucking awful connection to Hydra came up, I never once thought you were – I don’t know, playing me. A plant. So I can trust that. I’d um… Tony gave me access to the feed in the training room. I heard your conversation with Natasha.”

 

Bucky stares at Steve blankly. He can’t be expected to remember what happened before the sex. “Which part?”

 

“Well, all of it,” Steve says, looking embarrassed. “But specifically when Natasha suggested you see a therapist because this whole serum thing is kind of a lot to deal with. And I realised that I – I want to be here for you for this. In whatever capacity you’ll take me. I don’t want to watch you on a feed to know you’re okay. I was coming to find you when Natasha tricked you into coming to me. And… I want to be the person you can lean on if you need to.”

 

“Oh my god you were creepily spying on me because you love me,” Bucky whispers, and Steve throws a cushion that smacks him in the face. Laughing, Bucky sets aside his food, and crawls up Steve’s body to set aside his food and kiss him. With a lot of tongue, because he can.

 

“Is it too soon to ask you to think about moving in when we haven’t had a first date?” Steve asks, tipping his face to look up at him with a lazy smile.

 

“Yes, _god_ , you creeper. Ask me tomorrow,” Bucky says, and kisses him again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Come say hi on tumblr!](http://geneticallydead.tumblr.com/)


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